


turn back into stars

by crinklefries



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Alternate Universe - Olympics, Alternate Universe - Sports, Enemies to Lovers, Fake/Pretend Relationship, M/M, Mention of depression and anxiety, Parental Death, Slow Burn, but you hate the person you need to fake the relationship with?, equal amounts fluff and angst, extremely dumb boys, figure skater Bucky Barnes, figure skater Steve Rogers, figure skating AU, okay apparently a lot of angst, rivals on ice, stucky on ice, that's the fic, there's a fine line between rivalry and falling in love, you know when you need to fake a relationship to make it to the Olympics?
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-11-12
Updated: 2018-11-24
Packaged: 2019-08-22 18:39:44
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 14
Words: 56,374
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16603421
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/crinklefries/pseuds/crinklefries
Summary: Their rivalry begins like this: they’re teenagers, skating the same circuits, competing in the same competitions. What happens is that they compete against each other for the novice boy’s title in the North Atlantic Regional Figure Skating Competition and they both somehow tie for first place. There are no ties in competition, but their scores are identical across the board.Steve hates that Bucky took his win from him and Bucky hates that Steve thinks he won instead of tying, like the results said. The ensuing verbal scuffle had cemented what would come to be a slightly unhealthy long-term skating rivalry.The intervening years don't help.***Perennial rivals since childhood, Steve Rogers and Bucky Barnes face off against each other to achieve their Olympic figure skating dreams. But when bad luck and bad falls get in their way, Steve realizes there might only be one way to make it to Wakanda after all.It's reckless and it's definitely incredibly stupid, but to win Olympic gold, these two enemies will need to come together as a pair--on the ice and off.





	1. prologue.

**Author's Note:**

  * For [debwalsh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debwalsh/gifts).



> This fic is about _nine_ months in coming. That's right, if you're wondering why there's an Olympics AU being posted in November, the answer is because it was planned _in February_. Still, is it ever the _wrong_ time to post figure skating Olympic rival fake dating enemies to lover fic? 
> 
> My personal answer is no.
> 
> A few disclaimers on the early end--my figure skating knowledge consists of avid Olympics watching and the highly esteemed services of Dr. Google. I have taken creative liberties as far as humanly allowed to make this fic work and for those figure skating enthusiasts out there--I apologize in advance! I hope this is still enjoyable to read, regardless of the sheer amount of suspension of disbelief required of you.
> 
> Finally, this fic is dedicated to [Deb Walsh](https://archiveofourown.org/users/debwalsh), who so kindly bid for me during this year's [Fandom Trumps Hate](https://fandomtrumpshate.tumblr.com/)! Deb, I'm so sorry this took so long--but hopefully this silly, ridiculous story makes the wait worth it. :) Thank you again for bidding + donating to some amazing causes. ♥

 

 

**

**prologue.**

The woman in front of him, dark brown hair, cat-eye glasses, and a smile that stretches across her teeth in a way that is either charming or patronizing, he can’t really say, raises an eyebrow. Steve watches her, almost unseeingly, and he must blink one too many times because her smile falters a bit at the wide edges and she shifts from one foot to the other.

“Steve?” she tries again. She has a recorder in her hand, with a strip of tape across the front, emblazoned with the word _BUZZFEED_. “Did you hear the question?”

Steve is all stomach-twisting nerves and general nervous energy, his mind a chaotic array of half-images that could form an answer, if he could make his mouth cooperate long enough to form, you know, actual words.

“What?” he finally tries and laughs. He hopes it’s a light thing, but it’s as tight as he feels. “I’m sorry. I’m--”

“Oh, you must be nervous,” the reporter clucks sympathetically. “Of course, so close to Qualifiers. I asked what was it that made you want to become a figure skater?”

Oh, that’s why, Steve thinks, breathing out a little shakily. It wasn’t the nerves after all. It was the question altogether.

**

It was always just the two of them, Steve and Sarah Rogers. Steve had a father at some point, he supposes, and Sarah has assured him on more than one occasion that he was a lovely man whom she loved very dearly, except he had gone and died before Steve’s first birthday, so all he really has to remember the man with half of his DNA content is a blurry picture of himself, a mere infant, trying to slobber on a blond man’s nose. It’s Sarah’s favorite picture and she tells Steve at least once a month that he bears a striking resemblance to the man getting his nose gnawed on, but as Steve can largely only see a tiny blond gnawing on a nose, he’s always been skeptical.

Sarah Rogers was his mother, father, and best friend rolled into one small and incomprehensibly beautiful human. She had also been one of the most graceful and talented figure skaters to ever compete in the sport.

When Steve remembers his childhood, it isn’t too many memories of him and his mother at the park or him and his mother at the movies, but him and his mother at the rink, Sarah Rogers in velvet and skates and Steve, trying desperately to peer over the sides at the ice. Sarah glided across the ice as though she had been born for it, her movements so smooth and her jumps so exquisite that sometimes Steve forgot she could walk on the ground at all. She would bound from one end of the ice, lift herself into the air, and he would hold his breath until her blades found the ground again. He would always let it out fast, in a rush, as though his breath and his breath alone would keep her from falling right through. Sarah would finish her particular routine and come to the side with a slick, sharp sound and Steve would nearly tumble out from the pen trying to get to her. Sarah Rogers would laugh, take a tiny hand, and lead him out with her, carefully, ever so very carefully.  

All of Steve’s best memories are from there; from the side of the ice, watching, enthralled, clapping, thrilled, and, eventually, when he was just old enough and just big enough, pulling on pairs of skates of his own.

  
He was seven years old when everything changed.  
  
It was during a practice, leading up to the Olympic Qualifying Trials and despite her age--Steve would later learn that twenty eight in ice skating years was practically dead and buried--she was in the best form she had ever been. She was a contender for an Olympic spot, a judge and fan favorite on the back of a remarkable fourth place finish in that year’s World Figure Skating Championship. Sarah had just missed out on bronze medal. Steve had cheered himself hoarse from the sidelines anyway.

That had been months ago and she was still landing axel after axel. Sarah Rogers was relentless beauty and grace on ice. But, Steve also knew, she was struggling off of it. Stress, maybe, from the pressure of Qualifiers, or worry, from the virus Steve accidentally caught that had ended up with him in the hospital, or her ever-lingering anxiety, from a family history of ever-lingering anxiety. ( _Mental health_ , Sarah Rogers had taken her young son aside on many, many occasions, _is very important. Anxiety? Depression? They run in our family, sweetling, you have to take care of yourself._ Steve had been four years old the very first time. He had blinked at her pronouncement and then gone back to finger-painting.)

Despite her performances, Sarah hadn’t been sleeping well and she hadn’t been eating well and there was a terrible cough that she just couldn’t seem to get rid of. On this day, before she took to the ice, she even forgot to give Steve a kiss on the forehead, and Sarah Rogers never forgot to give her favorite boy a kiss on the forehead. ( _Good luck_ , _sweetling_ , Sarah Rogers had told her son on many, many occasions. _You are my good luck charm_. Steve had been six months old the very first time. He had blinked at her and gurgled happily.)  
  
In retrospect, it had been a bad omen, forgetting that kiss.

  
It was the start of something awful and that day, everything went wrong, one after the other after the other. Sarah's laces came untied and she slipped on the ice and she didn’t finish a spin here and she missed a rotation there. When she finally jumped for her double axel, it was all wrong.

Steve, seven years old, with the acute eyes of someone who had been watching his mother figure skate for his entire little life, could see immediately something wasn't right. Her balance was off. She didn’t have the speed necessary. Her laces were still untied. She looked pale and shaken, uncertain in a sport that required precision and, above all, confidence. It was a red flag; it was all red flags. Sarah took off and Steve, heart fluttering, stomach leaden with dread, put his fingers over his eyes.

He heard the crack of her leg before he heard anything else.  
  
  
It was a devastating break, the kind that shatters dreams in a hospital bed. It was the kind of break that Sarah Rogers would carry with her the rest of her life, a twinge of pain whenever she walked too fast or the weather was too mercurial. It ended her hopes for the Olympics and, with it, her bright and beautiful career.

What it did not end was her love for her son and the brightness in her eyes--never a moment of frustration, never a breath of envy, always just pure, unadulterated enthusiasm and pride--when he took to the ice too, boots laced, arms steady, moving with the ease and delicate grace of someone who had watched the ice, who had grown up on the ice; someone who, too, had been born to be there.

  
**

“You were out for two years,” the BuzzFeed reporter is saying. “No excuses, no rumors, just one day you’re on the ice and the next you’re not. Do you want to talk about it? What happened at Worlds?”

Steve doesn’t think about World’s. He doesn’t think about that time at all. Where there should be two years there’s nothing but a gaping, empty chasm of time.

The woman’s smile flickers when he doesn’t answer. She does that nervous throat clearing that people do when they don’t know how to address an awkward situation.

“We’re glad to have you back at any rate,” she says. “We didn’t know if you were going to come back to skate again. What made you do it?”

This, Steve can answer. He looks up toward the sky when he does. It’s blue here, the clearest blue he’s ever seen.

He looks back toward the reporter with a distant smile.

“I wasn’t done yet.”


	2. one. (qualifiers)

Steve isn’t nervous about Qualifiers.

It’s been almost two years since the last time he competed on the international, or even national, stage, but there’s something about the ice and the competition and the adrenaline between the two that strangely calms him. Even the buzzing around him dims, the reporters trying to take not-so-covert pictures, speaking into their recording devices, speculating in barely hushed tones about Steve, his sudden return, and what that meant for the sport, if anything.

It's a lot of noise, but when it’s just Steve and the rink in front of him, everything else is just white noise.

It helps that he’s landed multiple triple axels during practice recently.

He has one earbud in and one out, listening to some electro pop playlist that he found while browsing Spotify one day, while also following the shape of the words Sam’s mouth is making.

Steve is pretty sure Sam’s talking about the Penguins again because apparently everyone hates the Penguins, not that Steve would know because although his best friend is one of the rising stars of the New York Rangers and although Steve constantly gets free tickets to Rangers games, he barely has time to go to practice and come home and take care of his cat, let alone also learn the rules of hockey in addition to attending games.

“I can’t tell if you’re not listening to me out of spite or if this is like that time when Clint got into World of Warcraft and we just stopped listening to him for the next six months,” Sam says.

Steve blinks.

“It’s just, he would start talking about dragons and orcs and princesses and you could tune out for thirty minutes and thirty minutes later he would still be talking about the same dragons and orcs and princesses,” Steve says. “I think.”

“The third option,” Sam says, ignoring Steve’s rather insightful comment, “is that you cannot take your eyes off of him.”

That sours Steve’s mood.

“Come on. You’re really going to stare daggers at him the entire time?” Sam asks.

Steve rolls his eyes and bends to tie his boot laces.

“I wouldn’t want him to think we were friendly,” Steve mutters, making sure the strings are tight, no room to loosen. The last thing he needs is to trip over his own laces during his exalted return to the ice, or whatever.

“Yeah? Now is this a mistake he's gonna make because of the last time you tried to hex him or the last time you started a Twitter feud with him?” Sam raises an eyebrow.

“First of all, he started the feud, not me,” Steve says. He switches over to his other boot. “Second of all, Sam, do you think if I could hex Bucky Barnes, I wouldn’t have done it by now?”

“I think you like beating him too much to cheat,” Sam says.

“A hex isn’t cheating, it’s what he deserves,” Steve mutters. He tries to wiggle his feet in his skates, but they’re encased firmly inside. Perfect.

“Yeah, okay, crazy,” Sam says. He settles a hand on Steve’s shoulder. “How you feeling, Rogers?”

Steve takes a breath and looks up from the bench.

There are skaters warming up in the rink, looping in circles, arms balanced around them, the slight _shwick_ of their skates against the ice. The audience murmurs in the background, voices a low hum that Steve can not only ignore, but takes some measure of comfort in. Coach Fury is talking to Peter Parker at the boards near the rink. Another skater, Erik, is doing warm ups near another bench, his black and gold outfit tight as a second skin on him, earbuds in. He’s twisting his neck from side to side, jumping up and down in place every once in a while, like someone who’s watched Rocky one too many times. Every athlete has his own way of dealing with nerves.

For Steve, it’s simpler than that. Steve swallows his nerves by watching everything around him happen. Then he closes his eyes and imagines himself on the ice.

  
Steve had grown up in ice rinks. He knows the height of them, the smell of them, the way they feel--they’re always cold, a chill that hangs in the air and creeps into his hair and under his skin if he stands still for long enough. He knows the way they feel when they’re empty and the way they sound when they’re full, sound swallowed by high ceilings and echoing around hollow walls.

An ice rink is where Steve had watched his mother transform from his best friend into someone larger than that, someone intangible, an effervescent, ephemeral being. When his mother had given him his first pair of skates, age three, he had toddled onto the ice and immediately fallen over. He doesn’t remember it, but he remembers his mother telling the story to him a dozen times over. He had fallen, but instead of crying, he had smiled, like falling had been the greatest pleasure of his little life.

Steve thinks it hasn’t changed since. On the ice is where he feels large too, something more than himself, a weightless entity with wings, someone or something not defined by height or frequent ill health, but by speed, power, grace. Steve Rogers on land is tolerable at best, but Steve Rogers on the ice is a vision, smooth lines and effortless confidence.

When he opens his eyes today it’s no different.

Steve knows ice rinks. He know how they feel. He knows how they smell. He knows that once he begins, he’ll be unstoppable. Two years means nothing when the ice is your home.

He quirks a smile at Sam.

“Great,” he says. “Never been better.”

“That’s good,” Sam says. He gives Steve a look that could be apologetic or could honestly just be shit-eating. “Because here comes your favorite person.”

Steve hastily looks up and sees _him_ \--his arch-rival, his nemesis, the person he despises the most in this fleeting, miserable world.

His good mood evaporates immediately.

  
Their rivalry begins like this: they’re teenagers, skating the same circuits, competing in the same competitions. Bucky is a year older than Steve, eleven at the time, Steve a mere ten going on seven-and-a-half if looks are anything to go by. It’s unclear if it starts because Bucky actually accuses Steve of being seven-and-a-half or if it’s because Steve tells Bucky his jump wasn’t high enough or if they try to be friends, briefly, and then realize they’re polar opposites, on the ice and off, but what ends up happening is that they compete against each other for the novice boy’s title in the North Atlantic Regional Figure Skating Competition and they both somehow tie for first place.  
  
There are no ties in competition, but their scores are identical across the board and it’s a competition for children besides. What should be a victory for both is considered a loss. Athletes take loss hard, no matter the age.

Steve hates that Bucky took his win from him and Bucky hates that Steve thinks he won instead of tying, like the results _said_. The ensuing verbal scuffle, witnessed only by one of the novice girls, a red-haired, sarcastic girl named Natasha, had cemented what would come to be a slightly unhealthy long-term skating rivalry.

The intervening years don’t help.

  
Steve and Bucky find themselves competing against one another more often than not and trading places on the podium to add insult to injury. Sometimes Steve comes in first and Bucky comes in second and sometimes Bucky comes in first and Steve comes in second and they’re always snotty about it, if not to others, then to each other. _Boys are so stupid_ , Natasha huffs sometime around their fourteenth or fifteenth years and she’s more right than wrong because it’s during the Junior Figure Skating Championships that year that Steve and Bucky get into a fight.

The details of the fight aren’t so important as the fight itself and how they got busted by their coaches in the locker room, tousling on the ground, arms around each other, knees up, fists out, and shouting insults. They’re immediately disqualified from the competition.

It’s the only time Steve has ever gotten disqualified from a competition and he’s never forgiven Bucky for it.

Sometimes Sam tells him he’s being irrational and sometimes Tony tells Bucky he’s being dramatic and at least once every few months Natasha tells them both, separately and together, that they need to fucking get over it and themselves, but Steve can’t seem to shake it and neither can Bucky. They seem designed to be polar opposites, both observant enough to know what to say to piss the other boy off and cunning enough to know exactly when to say it. They’re a perfect storm of unnecessary misunderstandings, juvenile grudgery, and the sheer ability to be as irritating as possible to the person they want to irritate the most.

It’s more than that though.  
  
There’s something about the other boy that gets under Steve’s skin, a cockiness maybe, or a confidence, an arrogant ease he carries because Bucky slides through the world like the world was meant for him, when Steve--well, he’s only ever belonged on ice.  
  
They meet time and time again, one and two, two and one. Twelve years later, Steve still riles up Bucky and Bucky still riles up Steve and if everyone notices that they vehemently, overwhelmingly, irrevocably hate each other, well, they leave it to them, so long as they don’t get caught fighting on camera.

Or backstage during a national competition. Again.

  
Steve watches Bucky approach now and tries to swallow some of that familiar ire, always simmering beneath the surface of his skin, except and until Bucky opens his mouth and then it spikes up, less a simmer and more a crescendo of fury. He taps his skates against the ground, the blade covers making a thudding noise as they hit the hard surface.

“Sam, I’m gonna--” Steve starts, trying to make his escape before his arch-nemesis can ruin his concentration, but he’s two seconds too late.

“Well look who the cat dragged in,” Bucky Barnes says, all affected and lazy. “It’s been a minute or two years, Stevie.”

Steve closes his eyes for a moment, pushing a breath past the familiar clench in the pit of his stomach. He imagines, briefly, a world without this; without, namely, Bucky Barnes. He doesn’t want Bucky dead or whatever, he’s not important enough for that, but it’s like that one Goosebumps book in his head. The clock turns back and someone wishes Bucky out of existence. One second he’s there and the next he isn’t. Poof and the world is immediately better, brighter, with more color, a place where kids never get sick and no one is lactose intolerant because lactose-free cheese makes for really sad pizzas.

Steve never gets what he wants.

Because when he opens his eyes, Bucky is still, unfortunately, there.  

“That’s not my name,” Steve says flatly. “And not long enough.”

When Bucky Barnes smirks it’s not an obvious thing, stretching across his face grotesquely like some kind of caricature of a movie villain. No, when Bucky Barnes smirks it’s even worse. His eyes, a bright, light grey-blue that always seems to glow under the lights of the arena, narrow just slightly, his eyebrows tilting toward one another, the curve of his lips quirking up at one end. When Bucky smirks, his already irritatingly handsome face grows warmer somehow, not like he’s mocking you, but like he’s laughing with you, like here he is making fun of you, but he’s so fucking good looking that the joke is that you’re making fun of yourself too.

Steve can’t stand it.  
  
Bucky is a hideous, terrible ogre and it’s not only patently unfair that people think he’s being kind when he’s being an asshole, but it’s disgusting that somehow, he grows like three times more attractive doing it.

Not that Steve pays attention to how attractive people find his arch-rival. Steve personally thinks he looks like a foot, what with his perfect teeth and his perfect ears and that stupid dimple in his chin and the way his hair, all long in the front and short in the back, flips down into his face when he hasn’t gelled it properly or after he’s landed a jump perfectly and it comes askew, but just so.

“Ouch,” Bucky says now. “That’s not very sporting.”

“It’s a sports competition,” Steve says with a smile that’s more like the world’s most obvious grimace. “It’s definitionally sporting.”

“That's the best you can do?” Bucky says--there it is, another smirk, like Steve’s just some kind of amusing fly he can’t quite swat away. “Not your best effort by half.”

“What, like you at the Grand Prix?” Steve smiles and he finally feels it slot into place, a disproportionate sense of triumph.

Bucky clearly tries not to, but he flushes at that.

Steve hadn’t been there to compete, in Nagoya. What had happened was that Natasha had an extra ticket to come watch her compete in the women’s competition and Steve still hadn’t returned to the ice. She’d said it would be good for him and it had been, in a way.  

The competition in the ISU Grand Prix is always steep, being one of the crowned jewels of competitive figure skating. Last year had been no different. With Steve incommunicado, Bucky was by far the United States had to offer, but T’Challa, representing Wakanda, had one of his best competitive performances by far and Peter Parker had made a great debut in the senior circuit.  
  
Still, it should have been easy. Bucky was by the favorite to win, by an unreal margin.

That was, until the fall.

Steve doesn’t take pleasure in the fall of other skaters, but he had at this one because Bucky had been so fucking _insufferable_ before the competition, giving interviews about how he didn’t have any rivals in the sport, only sources of inspiration, as if that wasn’t the biggest load of bullshit anyone with two ears and a single brain cell to spare could see through. It wasn’t directed at _him_ , but it was directed at Bucky’s competition and the sentiment was so dismissive and unkind that Steve had forced his poor coach, Abraham Erskine, who was about the sweetest coach the sport had ever seen, to capitulate to his demands to introduce triple axels into his competitive performance rotation. Assuming he ever wanted to return to competitive performance.

Still, it was a brutal fall, during his long program, an over-rotation on one jump that he just couldn’t control, and it had shaken Bucky so much that he had made a series of mistakes in his remaining time that he could have skated half-asleep on any other day. His score had plummeted enough that it had knocked him clear to the bottom of the six competitors.  
  
It was the worst finish Bucky had earned since he had started the competitive circuit.

  
If it was unkind to bring it up now, then, well, that was only because Bucky Barnes brought out the worst in everyone around him.

“Steve,” Sam says with a frown. “Come on, man.”

“Better land all those jumps, Rogers,” Bucky says in a barely controlled tone, face pink. “I hear the Olympics is accepting child-sized athletes this year.”

Steve flushes in return and he almost snaps then, he really does, but luckily, or unluckily, Sam is there, hand on his shoulder.

“Cool it, both of you,” he says, warningly. “There’s camera crews everywhere. This is Qualifiers, not your backyard skating competition. Fury catches one word of this stupid bickering and you’re both gonna be out on your asses while the rest of us fly to Wakanda.”

Sometimes, Steve thinks that Sam should have been the figure skater and he should have been the hockey player, for the amount of peacemaking Sam does and the amount of fights Steve is desperate to get into.

“Fuck you, Barnes,” Steve says, voice low so that only Bucky and Sam can hear. “Suck my dick.”

“Is there enough there to suck or--?” Bucky smirks again and he’s such a _fucking asshole_ that it’s amazing there’s any other part to his body.

“Let it go, Steve,” Sam says, turning and whispering urgently into Steve’s ear. “It’s not worth it. Not with everyone watching.”

Steve feels the anger throb against his neck, a pounding discord in his ears.

“You’re on soon,” Sam says, hand still firmly fit to Steve’s shoulder. “Show him on the ice.”

It really is only by Sam’s grace that Steve hasn’t been kicked out of the sport altogether. He swallows angrily.

“Happy sixth place, asswipe,” Steve hisses as he shuffles past Bucky, indiscreetly bumping into him as he does so.

“Try not to run out before the competition this time,” Bucky retorts, eyes narrowed. “If you can manage that.”

This time it’s Sam that snaps, hand darting out to grasp Bucky’s arm.

“You don’t know what you’re talking about,” he growls.

“Yeah, whatever, Wilson,” Bucky mutters. He throws Steve a look of pure disdain before shaking Sam off.

Steve doesn’t wait for him to say whatever it is he wants to say next. He can’t afford to let Bucky Barnes get into his head, not when he’s minutes away from his performance. He shakes his head and hands like he can just brush off the sparks of anger he feels crawling up and down his spine.

He crosses the boards to where Fury is hunched over, glaring with his usual unimpressed expression at whatever Erik’s trying to tell him this time.

On the ice, the other Peter--Quill, is doing some weird, complicated routine to a David Bowie song that Steve has heard a dozen times this past season, but still doesn’t really know.

Parker is on after Quill and then Steve, before Loki Laufeyson, Scott Lang, and last, but certainly least, Bucky.

Steve stretches his arms above him and then around him, side to side and in circles, nervous energy that bubbles up before every major event, but which he’s always able to channel into fidgeting disguised as warming up.

Steve watches Quill land a jump and closes his eyes, breathing in and out through his nose.

Some people, like Bucky Barnes, watch their rivals like a hawk during competitions. Steve, he blocks them all out until he hears he’s on deck.  
  
He sticks his earbuds in, Electric Light Orchestra soothing his nerves, and breathes.


	3. two. (qualifiers)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's so weird and out of my usual to post shorter chapters! I'm usually out here posting 10K chapters in every fic I write. Hopefully the shorter ones are still a nice little pick-me-up in your day though! :)

“Come on Rogers,” Fury growls and Steve’s eyes snap open. “A hundred different figure skating Twitter reporters are dying to post to their 42 followers how many axels you landed on your dramatic reemergence. Don’t disappoint.”

Steve takes his earbuds out and slides the blade covers off. He gets up, waddles over to the board, and Fury swings the little door open. Steve pauses, hand on the barrier. It's been so long since he's done this that he feels dizzy for a moment, the pressure of the moment weighing heavily on his shoulders. It used to be easier, when he was younger and knew only that this was his chosen family, his only real home. It's different now that he's left it and come back. He wavers on the thinnest of blades, unsure of everything he was always so confident about. He doesn't know if his return is welcome. He doesn't know if the ice wants him back.  
  
"Rogers," Fury says, but it's softer this time. "Go."

The white spread out in front of him, a blank, yawning canvas. Steve lets his blades carry him forward.

The calm, thin veneer of self doubt crumbles almost immediately. He feels the adrenaline pick up in his veins, the sounds of the arena buffeting him, carrying him out from the side to the center of the rink.

The ice feels slick under his skates, his movements light and natural. He had almost forgotten the electricity of it all.

Steve feels the spark under his skin and thinks it’s the first time in two years he’s been able to take a real, cold, gasping breath.

His costume is black on the bottom, with thick stripes of deep blue and dark red on top. Silver studs scatter across the strokes of color, like stars falling against the flag. The sleeves are puffed, narrowing at his thin wrists. Steve runs a finger through his hair, makes sure the bangs are out of his eyes.

He crouches into his first stance and the first tendrils of music begin above him. For a moment, it almost feels normal, like nothing has happened between the last time he skated and now.

Steve rises.

He takes one last look at the boards, checking to see if she’s there, a habit born of a lifetime of seeking out brown hair and blue eyes and a loving smile on the lips of the person he loves the most in the world.

It’s a mistake.

Because Sarah Rogers isn’t there, but Bucky Barnes is. The devastation hits him, quick and debilitating.

Bucky raises an eyebrow, his mouth curved into his signature smirk.

Steve misses the first beat, his head jarring out of that space it goes to when he skates. The sounds around him come rushing back in and he jerks when he should be smooth.  
  
It’s all downhill from there.

**

He stumbles and misses his cues. His movement is off, he can feel it before he takes jumps, not getting enough speed or height and under-rotating jumps he’s nailed hundreds of times during practice.

The music, a sweeping piece of Mozart, feels foreign on his skin as he struggles to pick himself up, align himself with that place in his head where it’s just him above and the ice below.

His heart hammers in his chest, nerves he rarely feels crawling up his stomach, like his body can tell it’s failing when it’s supposed to be succeeding. It feels like a knot where it should be smooth movements.

He jumps on a swell of string and lands on his feet. The jump leads into another jump and he makes that too.

 _Better land all your jumps, Rogers_ , he hears in his head.  
  
He cues himself up to do a double axel.

 _Try not to run out before the competition_   _this time_.  _If you can manage even that_.

Bucky’s face is leering at him in his head, ugly, sneering, betrayed.  
  
Steve gets a phone call, minutes before he's supposed to take to the ice.  
  
It's in his head, all of it, a nightmare of memory and sensations he had meant to leave on solid ground.

Steve feels the wobble even before he jumps into the air. His stomach clenches, his head a whirlwind of panic. He can't catch his breath, can't seem to right what's been thrown off, wrong.

He falls.

**

 

Bucky leans against the boards, large, bright blue headphones fit over his ears, moving his head along to whatever Franz Ferdinand happens to be singing at the moment.

He taps his fingers against the edge of the rink and leans forward.

He watches as Steve skates out from the edge, blond hair swept to the side, ridiculous American flag costume plastered to his body. It's a sight he's seen a hundred times before, but it's different this time, foreign in a way that makes him feel off-balance.

Bucky feels a strange cocktail of feelings watching him now, two years later, two years after the night he had abandoned his team and country with no explanation, mid-competition, as though a team was something he could put on when it was most convenient to him and cast off when he didn’t need it anymore.

His stomach churns with anger and latent frustration watching him, stupid, little Steve Rogers with his stupid costumes and his stupid big eyes and the stupid way he's always taken to the ice like he some kind of swan. He had believed better of Steve, once, had thought maybe in him was a kind of fiery, relentless, kindred spirit that Bucky had struggled to find in anyone else. He and Steve had never been friends, had barely been teammates, but they _had_ been competitors, constant and ruthless, two of an obsessive, perfectionist kind.   
  
The thing is, they had grown up next to each other, if not with each other. Bucky had spent countless hours training with Steve, competing against Steve, skating loops around Steve, and it still pissed him off, every time, how effortless it all was for him. Bucky was good at skating, one of the best even, but it took him hard work. It took hours at the gym and hours at practice and hours of watching Olympics videos and World's videos, his room littered with posters of the greats—Plushenko, Yagudin, Button, Kwan, Yamaguchi, Hamill—hoping that one day their greatness would rub off on him.

But Steve? He had always skated like it was breathing to him. Bucky remembers watching him as a kid and envying that, how he barely had to think about it.

He had tried, once, to ask if Steve would practice with him, but—

Well, whatever.

There was a grudging respect there anyway, if no love or even like, an acknowledgment that no one else quite understood the sacrifice or the commitment needed to become who they had been. That had been before, though. Bucky would never make that same mistake again.

The truth was that Steve Rogers was a dick. Anyone who could walk out on his national team in the middle of one of the most important competitions of his career was an asshole not worth knowing.

Still, it’s a lifetime of watching and competing against and with Steve that makes Bucky see it, the slight tremor as he skates out during his undeserved and triumphant return to a sport he abandoned.

Bucky swallows heat and ash.

He fucking hates him.

So when Steve looks over at him, Bucky smirks.

 _You may have everyone else fooled_ , he wants to spit at him.  _But I know better._

It seems to startle something in him, which makes Bucky frown for a second.

But before he can understand what’s happened, Steve starts skating.

And it’s all bad.

  
Bucky leaves before the fall because he can feel it coming. It’s not him, it’s his arch rival, but it reminds him too much of Nagoya, the horrible feeling of ice under his ass, his hands freezing and smarting, the plummeting of his heart as he realizes what he’s done and the unraveling that follows after.

His heart hammers at the memory he tries to push desperately out of his head. He leaves the rink to head to the locker room, but sees a familiar head of red hair halfway there.

He veers right to where Natasha is practicing ballet poses and holds against the mirrored edge of the studio. There are other skaters in here doing warm ups and practicing—Bucky sees Pepper Potts talking to Tony Stark at one end of the room and Bruce Banner meditating against the wall opposite Natasha.

Natasha sees him approach in the mirror. She goes through a few more plies before turning.

“Well this is a surprise,” she says. “Aren’t you supposed to be scouting your competition?”

Bucky takes his headphones off, slides them around his neck, and leans against the mirror next to her.

“Yeah, there’s no competition out there for me right now,” he says as cockily as he can muster and she snorts.

“Weird,” she says. “You usually take any opportunity to stare at Rogers.”

“Shut up,” Bucky says. “That asshole doesn’t deserve my attention.”

“Ah, this again,” Natasha says. She rolls her eyes and beckons him to follow her over to her stuff.

“What do you mean this again?” Bucky says waspishly.  
  
"Your vendetta against Rogers," Natasha says. "I'm bored of it."  
  
"It's not a vendetta, Natalya. It's--justice. Or injustice, whatever." Natasha snorts, which isn't the reaction Bucky hopes for. He flushes with anger. “You were _there_ , Nat. You saw what happened.”

“Yeah and I was also there when we won World's last year,” Natasha says, unimpressed.

“That’s not the point,” Bucky says with irritation.

Natasha unscrew her water bottle and takes a mouthful.

“Uh huh.”

Bucky’s known Natasha for almost half his life and he still can’t stand it when she gets like this, judgmental and monosyllabic, like she hadn’t spent the better part of teen years having some kind of cold war with Okoye, no pun intended.

“That's all you can say?" Bucky demands.

"What do you want me to say, James?" Natasha asks, almost tiredly. She fixes a stray curl. "It happened two years ago and we still got that title, eventually."

"You don’t just _abandon_ your team at one of the world’s biggest stages!” Bucky splutters. He'll never understand this--how so many people could forgive Steve, could simply _forget_ what he had done that night.  
  
Bucky can feel it surface again, the hurt he had felt, watching Fury come back from the sidelines, ashen-faced.

 _Roger’s gone_ , he had grunted and despite the clamor, hadn’t said anything more.  
  
Bucky remembers doing the math in his head, everything shattering around him. Down one competitor, they hadn’t been able to overcome the team differences.

Up until then, Bucky had thought Steve Rogers was a lot of things, but a traitor hadn’t been one of them. Then he had disappeared for two years, no explanation, and Bucky had learned that Steve was a coward too.

“Listen,” Natasha says. “Frankly, I don’t care. It was a dick move and it sucked at the time, but it’s been two years. We won it the year after and now we’re competing for the Olympics. Whatever Steve did or had to do, that’s his problem. We don’t know his story, maybe he didn’t have a choice. Who cares now? It’s in the past. Stop dwelling on shit you can’t change, it’s annoying and makes you spin off-kilter every time.”

Natasha doesn’t _get_ it.

She’s never understood and it’s never bothered Bucky before, but it bothers him now. This isn't a matter of interpretation, of Natasha's arbitrary and eviscerating judgment. This time, _he’s_ right and Steve is wrong. Steve has no place being on the Olympic team.

“Whatever, Nat,” Bucky says and pushes himself off from the wall. “I have to go warm up anyway.”

Natasha raises an eyebrow, but doesn’t say anything else.

Bucky turns his back to her, lifts his headphones up again when finally he feels a hand on his elbow.

“James,” she says quietly.

“What?” Bucky nearly snaps.

Natasha sighs. She’s not a patient person, but she’s a caring one. Natasha Romanoff is all walls and ice structures until she finds someone she loves. And then she protects them with the ferocity of a rather venomous creature.

“Good luck,” she says gently. “Don’t think so much. Just skate.”

Bucky grunts and then softens. He bends down because sometime between their thirteenth and fourteenth birthdays, Bucky had shot up and Natasha had stayed the same, and kisses her cheek.

She takes it for the apology it is and moves back to do plies against the wall.

Bucky puts his headphones back on and goes back out to the rink side. He closes his eyes and sways to the music until it’s his turn.

 _Just skate_ , Natasha had said.

That’s easier said than done.

  
Bucky taps his blade covers against the ground in beat to Franz, still on loop, and tries to ignore the buzz in his head, his parents in the crowd, and the memory of an ice rink similar to this one in Nagoya, an over-rotation, a fall, reporters and fans, cloying pity in their eyes, and Steve Rogers’ little angry, mean face.

Bucky opens his eyes and he can almost see him there, on ice, taunting him, thin limbs, soft blond hair, and lines that move like water on frozen blades.

 _Happy sixth place, asswipe_.

He had been there, had been the worst part. He had been in Nagoya, after what happened at World’s, sitting in the audience as though what he had done hadn’t mattered, as though he hadn’t shattered the dreams of everyone around him, as stupid and cowardly as he was. He had been there and he had seen Bucky fall, had sat and watched while Bucky lost the competition without him even competing.

And now he was here too and it’s in Bucky's brain no matter how badly he tries to shake it, Steve’s sneer and his taunt winding through Bucky’s mind, like vines wrapped around his thoughts.

“Barnes!” Fury barks and Bucky jerks to attention.

It’s not a great sign, the way his hands shake as he slides the blade covers off.

It’s an even worse sign that when his blades hit the ice he realizes he’s trembling.

Not from the cold or even from anger, but from nerves.

He centers himself and splays his arms out to either side of him, but when the music plays all he hears is Steve’s voice.

 _Happy sixth place. Asswipe_.

Years of training, of dreaming, of the unrelenting, destructive need to be perfect, absolutely, nothing-less-than perfect, ruined.

It closes around him, the wall of anxiety, a vise gripping his chest.  
  
Bucky hears the clamoring in his head, and Steve's voice. He panics and stumbles.

**

Steve doesn’t stick around after his kiss and cry. He barely sticks around for his own scores, but one look at Fury and he knows that one wrong move and it doesn’t matter what that score is, Fury will sideline his ass with no compunction and his one visible eye will glitter while doing it.

His scores are higher than the zeroes across the board he imagined, but that bar is low. He grits his teeth and tries not to let his nostrils flare as it crashes through him, the debilitating disappointment and, even worse, the guilt.

If he had been looking for redemption, he had failed at that too.

The score is abysmal and he nearly throttles his water bottle just seeing the numbers flash across the board.

“There’s still the long program,” Fury says lowly, but Steve knows a bullshit platitude when he hears it.

He gets to his feet and manages not to wobble. Now that it doesn’t fucking matter.

He waits until he’s back in the locker room to throw the bottle as hard as he can against the wall and let out a frustrated, strangled scream.

**

You know what they say about the long program, right? It might save you, but it won’t give you a miracle.

Even landing all of the jumps doesn’t make a difference.

Well it does.

But not enough.

**

The leader board is unbelievable, like something out of a fever dream or a nightmare.

Bucky looks at it three times to make sure he’s reading it properly and every time there’s this weird sound in his head and a hard pit in his stomach that he can’t quite swallow past. His vision catches in his throat. It makes sense, somehow, that nothing makes sense at all.

This had been his Olympic dreams, the one thing he had been certain of, the one thing he had based his entire life around. His parents had sacrificed everything for it. _He_ had sacrificed everything for it. Bucky doesn't remember the last time he had done something that wasn't skating. He had given up friendships for this, schooling, college, a chance to be someone whole and normal. Everything that Bucky was had been about this and this alone.  
  
And now he has to wait four more years and hope, desperately, that he doesn't get injured and that he maintains his form and that somewhere in the middle some young, new upstart doesn't come to take his crown. He has to hope that the race against time will still be in his favor, that his talent and hard work is enough to survive as his body ages and he falls out of his peak years. An athlete's career is short; it burns bright and fast, like gasoline. The plan had been to win before that flame burned out, to not give time a chance to rob him of his dream.

The plan had been to come back from Nagoya. To grasp the chance and prove finally, once and for all, that he was worthy, that he was the best there was. That he could be one of the Greats too, like all of his heroes before him.

It turns out that had been a lie too.  
  
It had all been just a lie.

* * *

    **MEN SINGLE SKATING - FINAL QUALIFYING RESULT**

  1. Loki Laufeyson
  2. Erik Stevens
  3. Peter Parker
  4. Scott Lang
  5. Bucky Barnes
  6. Steve Rogers
  7. Peter Quill
  8. Timothy Aloysius Cadwallader Dugan



_The first three positions qualify for the 2018 Winter Olympics in Wakanda. Fourth place will take the alternate position._

* * *

It should make it better, that he didn’t get sixth and Steve did, but it doesn’t. Somehow, it all rings hollow now.

“James,” Natasha says softly at his elbow. “I’m sorry. I know how much you wanted this."

He can’t stand to hear the pity in her voice. He can't stand anything anymore.

He turns and leaves.


	4. three. (results)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Things are starting to get fun now. ;) 
> 
> Warning: Minor violence from two idiots brawling ahead.

It would make sense, in some cursed kind of way, that the moment Steve lets his guard down, he would appear.

“Screaming isn’t going to make your score any better,” Bucky Barnes says disdainfully.

He should look as wrecked as Steve feels, but he doesn’t. If anything, Bucky seems to glow more, wearing loss as easily as he wears victory. It’s infuriating enough to make Steve punch something, so he tries, slamming one of the lockers shut and punching it after.

He lets out a frustrated growl as the pain flashes through his knuckle, reverberates up his wrist and into his arms.

“ _Fuck!_ ” he curses.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” Bucky stares at him. “Are you _deranged_?”

“Leave me alone, Barnes,” Steve growls and tries to punch the locker again.

He feels hands clasp around his arm and wrest him back, hard enough that Steve goes stumbling, right into Bucky.

Bucky, surprised, goes backwards and they both lose their footing, knocking into each other and then tumbling to the ground.

There’s approximately two beats as the two of them lay sprawled on the ground.

Then Steve lets out a frustrated kind of howl and Bucky says heatedly “ _You’re fucking crazy_ ” and there’s a second where they both glare at each other, heavy daggers, and then they lunge for each other at the exact same time.

Bucky reaches Steve first, his hands shoving into Steve’s shoulder. Steve nearly _shouts_ as he gets shoved into the ground. He grits his teeth, pain exploding at the base of his spine and he tries to knee Bucky in the balls in retaliation.

“You _dick_ ,” Bucky hisses out, moving his body out of the way just before Steve’s knees buck up.

“Get _off_ me,” Steve growls at him and tries to swipe at Bucky with his fist.

His misses and Bucky grabs his wrist, which makes Steve let out a noise like an angry wild animal. He twists under Bucky and tries to kicks up, lashing out desperately. This time, his foot catches Bucky in the shin and he shouts and they roll, Steve on top and Bucky underneath.

“ _Get off me_ ,” Bucky spits. “You _coward_. You’re a fucking, spoiled _coward._ ”

Steve is spitting mad, a sweeping, uncontrollable fury roiling through his body, starting at his chest and spreading everywhere, like a coil set on fire.

Bucky’s fingers dig into Steve’s shoulders and he grunts in pain and tries to hit Bucky, but Bucky catches his fist in a hand and squeezes hard. Steve grunts out in pain and Bucky uses the distraction to roll them over again.

“Shut the _fuck_ up,” Steve hisses, all venom. “I’m sick of _listening to you_. You don’t fucking know _anything._ ”

“ _Fuck you_. I know what I fucking _saw_ ,” Bucky growls and twists Steve’s wrists. “I was _there_. I was fucking _there_.”

“You’re obsessed with me,” Steve gasps in pain. “You’ve always been _obsessed_ with me.”

He growls and tries to kick him again. “ _Let. Go._ ”

Bucky doesn’t. He applies more pressure, traps Steve’s body under his, weighing Steve down under the weight of his animosity.

“You think you’re better than us,” Bucky says. His hair’s fallen loose from his performance-gelled coif. It slides into his eyes, covering the hatred there, but Steve can hear it in his voice. Bucky doesn’t bother hiding it. “You think you’re better than me because you don’t have to work as hard? You _left us to lose_ and now you come back here and get _into my head_ and--”

“ _Get off me_ ,” Steve raises his voice, struggling against Bucky. “Shut _up_ \--get the _fuck_ \--”

Steve tears a hand free from Bucky’s grasp and sticks it into his face, shoves enough space between them that Bucky falters. Steve uses his hesitation to shove a knee into his stomach and while he’s gasping in pain, Steve gets his hands onto Bucky’s chest and shoves and they roll again.      
  
Bucky shouts out a curse and Steve yells in frustration and they get hands on each other, shoving, rolling on the ground, growls punctuated by the pained gasps in between headlocks, shoulders clipping walls and benches, and angry, rising voices.

Steve gets a knee on Bucky’s chest, shoves him down and he’s hovering over him, hand at Bucky’s throat, spitting fire, Bucky sweaty and battered under him, his hair plastered to his forehead, his costume ripped at the shoulder. Steve’s hair is a mess too and he’s flushed and he’s angry, he’s so fucking _angry_ his skin is going to burst into flames.

“Leave me alone,” Steve spits, his voice low and full of hatred. “I was supposed to qualify. I came back to prove--I was _supposed_ to be there and you--with your sneering face in the audience. You got to me, you asshole, you ruined _everything_ are you fucking happy? You don’t know what you’ve _done_.”

“What have I done?” Bucky still manages to sneer, his voice squeezing out from under Steve’s grip. “Tell me, Rogers. Did I ruin your Cinderella story bullshit comeback by saying _hi_? God, you’re such a piece of shit, you abandon your entire fucking team and expect us to, what, treat you like fucking royalty because you got bored and decided to come back? _You’re not better than I am._ So _fuck you_ \--”

“Try to mention Worlds again,” Steve growls, moving his hand down to fist into the cloth at Bucky’s neck. “Just _try_ it and see what happens.”

“Is that supposed to be a threat?” Bucky mocks, high and cruel. “From _you_?”

“Fuck you,” Steve snarls. “Fuck. _You_.”

“You’re a _coward_ ,” Bucky seethes. His eyes are flashing, dark and furious. “You’re a coward and you’re fake and now you’re blaming _me_ for losing because God forbid you actually take responsibility for your own goddamned actions. Maybe if you could land a fucking jump--”

Steve drags Bucky up by his costume, fingers curled tightly into his collar.

“Hit me,” Bucky sneers. “Go ahead. I’ll see you sanctioned so fast it won’t be _two years_ this time, I’ll make sure you never skate again.”

“Fuck you,” Steve says, voice low and full of menace. “Fuck _you_ , I hate you, you haughty, sixth place piece of--”

Bucky turns purple. Quicker than Steve can anticipate, he grabs Steve’s collar, nails scraping Steve’s throat. The two of them are shaking, faces a mottled red of fury, nerves _screaming_ , years of uncontrolled animosity threatening to erupt into something bigger than the two of them, ready to tear into each other--

“Oh,” a voice says.

Steve’s mind is so fuzzy with anger that he doesn’t hear it for a second.

“What’s going on?”

Then Bucky turns his face toward the door and Steve sees his face go slack, the anger draining from it rapidly, replaced by a kind of horror that Steve remembers seeing one other time, when they were younger and their coach had caught them fighting and--

Steve’s head jerks toward the doorway and there’s a familiar brown-haired reporter standing there, a phone in her hand, a BuzzFeed badge around her neck.

The sight hits him faster than the ground did when he fell.

Oh.

Oh, _fuck_.

The woman’s eyes widen, darting between Steve’s flushed face and Bucky’s torn costume, the bruises on both of them, and Steve can see it, the moment she switches to the phone app. “Are you two fighti--”

The reporter doesn’t get a chance to finish her sentence because Steve does the only thing his panicked mind can come up with.

He drags Bucky closer and kisses him.

  
The reporter looks shocked, but not half as shocked as _Bucky_ , who was ready to tear Steve into pieces for one reason before and is now ready to tear him into pieces for a completely different reason.

He freezes at the press of Steve’s mouth to his, his eyes open wide, his body stiff, his brain grinding to a complete halt. For a second he thinks he’s fucking hallucinating. It’s only when Steve pinches his side that he gasps, his brain coming back online, their situation coming back to him in a rush--him and Steve, on the floor, hands at each other’s throats, voices hoarse, shouting obscenities--and he realizes in an instant that it’s this or completely disqualification.

Bucky, panicking rising in his chest, swallows the bile and horror in his throat and quickly lets go of Steve’s collar to slip a hand around the back of his neck.

Steve stills for a second, but then Bucky presses forward and their mouths meet more easily, quick and hard, and compelling.

He doesn’t look at the reporter, but tracks Steve’s eyes and he can tell when Steve schools his face into a smile that isn’t warm, but pretends to be.

“ _Oh_ ,” the reporter breathes out, her voice changed. “Are you two--”

Steve finally breaks the kiss, pulls back, a flush crawling up his cheek and it works, the pink of his cheekbones and his messy hair and those clear blue eyes and how he’s five feet fucking four inches and has bird-like hands and Bucky doesn’t have to turn around to know she’s bought it, hook line, and sinker.

“Sorry,” Steve says, pulling back and raising a hand to his mouth. His fingertips touch his lips and he looks embarrassed, but pleased. “We just--needed a moment--”

“Oh shit, no,” the reporter says and Bucky can hear the surprise and panic in her own voice. “I’m so sorry, I shouldn’t have come barging in here, I didn’t realize--”

Steve gives her a sheepish look, long blond eyelashes brushing the top of his cheeks. He leans forward and rests the side of his head against the top of Bucky’s shoulder.

Bucky doesn’t know what he’s doing. Bucky doesn’t know what to do.

Bucky doesn’t want to get kicked off the team.

He wraps a hand around Steve’s shoulder and turns, his own face melting into a smile.

“Yeah,” he says with a soft, almost shaky laugh. “Sorry, just needed a minute, after everything. We don’t go around talking about it. You know what they say. Barnes and Rogers, perennial--”

“Rivals,” the reporter nods, understanding. “Since childhood. On the ice and off of it.”

“It’s more fun that way isn’t it?” Bucky asks with his signature smile, a twinkle in his eye, easy charm to mask how quickly his heart is beating.

“Oh,” she says. “Oh of _course_. But, oh--you two are--?”

“Together,” Steve says. He presses his forehead to Bucky’s shoulder like he’s trying to hide an affectionate smile.

The woman lets out a little squeak.

Bucky starts to breathe a little easier then. They’ll get away with this, he thinks. They were stupid and careless, carried away by their own bitter disappointment and frustrations, but they can make it out of this alive. No one has to know, he thinks. They’re safe.

Or they would have been, anyway, if Bucky had had even a modicum of luck on his side, now or ever.

But, as it turns out, his entire life is some kind of cosmic horror show.

Because no sooner does Steve say _we’re together_ than a towering figure with a slightly menacing single-eye glare appears behind the reporter.

“Excuse me,” Fury growls. “You got clearance to be here?”

The woman looks behind her and jumps, terrified.

Then Fury’s single eye swivels to his two best, fallen skaters, wrapped around each other on the ground.

“Whatever to high hell you two are doing,” Fury says. “I don’t want to fucking know. Now get out of my locker room.”

**

The skaters gather around the conference room, changed out of their costumes, jackets and sneakers on, hair tied up, exhausted, but thrilled. In some cases, just dim.

Steve doesn’t have time to think about anything that happened in the locker room. Fury had dragged the reporter out and he and Bucky had shoved away from each other as fast as they could. They hadn’t said anything, could barely make eye contact with one another.

Steve had grabbed his things and gone to shower and change. He made sure to keep his head full of distracted observations--the burning muscles in his legs, the buzz of the audience leaving the arena, the distant chatter of the other skaters, the clatter of shoes and feet against the smooth floor. He had kept his thoughts carefully away from Bucky, the almost visceral hatred in his eyes, the shaking in his limbs, the press of his mouth against Steve’s.

He ignores it now too, stands to the side of Natasha and Peter Parker, allowing the two of them put space between him and his rival and letting all of the other skaters fill the space around them.

Fury’s going through a list on his clipboard.

“Individual, women,” he’s saying. “Romanoff, Potts, Danvers. Congratulations on qualifying. Coach May will follow up with you about travel arrangements.”

Steve’s thrilled for Natasha, he really is, but he can’t help but feel numb as she moves forward to receive a packet of information about how this is all going to work--going with the team to the Olympics.

His fight with Bucky had driven the results from his mind for one brief moment, but now it’s unavoidable, the number six staring up at him no matter how much he tries to forget. Not only had he failed to make the Olympics, he had failed miserably, embarrassingly even. His only saving grace had been that his Ma hadn’t been around to see it, that he hadn’t gotten the chance to disappoint her in person. It’s a lousy saving grace.

He swallows past the knot in his throat.

“Individual, men,” Fury says. “Laufeyson, Stevens, Parker. Come get your packets. Coulson will follow up with you for me.”

Peter goes up to get his packet and suddenly, the two people separating Steve and Bucky aren’t there anymore. Steve’s nails are digging into the palm of his hands, he’s trying so hard to ignore the overwhelming wave of misery that’s settling thickly over his shoulders.

People rustle around them and Steve makes the mistake of looking over.

Bucky’s jaw is set tight, his arms crossed at his chest. He’s fixed his hair, but he doesn’t look beautiful or ethereal like he usually does. He looks angry instead, maybe even defeated.

Bucky seems to sense someone watching because he looks up and catches Steve’s eyes. Almost immediately, he looks away in disgust. It doesn’t hurt Steve, not really, but after so much disappointment, it’s one more thing to add to the pit in Steve’s stomach.

He hates Bucky Barnes, but he wishes Bucky Barnes wouldn’t hate him. Not for the reason he does.

Steve tries not to sway on his feet from exhaustion and a crippling sense of loneliness.

“Pairs,” Fury says. “Stark and Rhodes, and--”

Fury pauses.

“The fuck?” he says loudly and Steve looks up. Everyone does.

Fury’s one eye is glaring at something on the page. He holds up the clipboard and waves it about, a little manically.

“Coulson!” he barks at his assistant coach.

Phil Coulson’s been in a corner talking to the qualified individual men, but his head pops up at his name.

“Yes, Coach?”

“What’s the meaning of this? What happened to Murdock and Natchios?”

“Ah,” Coulson says. “Coach, that’s what I was trying to tell you earlier. They uh, got disqualified.”

The room, which had been full of side whispers and murmurs, rustles and little restless movements, suddenly goes quiet.

Steve takes in a breath.

“The fuck for?” Fury barks again, although, in fairness, most of what Fury says comes out in a bark.

“Fighting,” Coulson says, sounding rather grim. “Again.”

“Motherfuck--” Fury starts cursing and then swallows the rest of it, as though it’s at all ambiguous. “We don’t have alternates for this shit. I told them. I fucking _told_ them to cut that shit out.”

“Sorry, Coach,” Coulson says. “Board’s decision.”

Fury looks so displeased, he starts a glower that levels most of the room into a complete, eerie silence. The skaters stand stock still, staring at Fury and Coulson. Even Coulson seems to pause with his entire body.

It’s Parker who asks the question that’s on everyone’s mind.

“Coach, what does that mean? Who’s going to replace them in pairs?”

When asked a year or five years or even a hundred years later, Steve couldn’t say what possessed him at that moment. He thinks maybe his brain was already so traumatized by the events of the day that it was floating away from the rest of his body. Or maybe he was having some kind of mental disconnect, or an out-of-body experience that only later he would realize was both shocking and unbelievably stupid.

“We can do it,” Steve says first and registers second.

Suddenly, a room of eyes swivel to him.

Steve nearly staggers back from the weight of those gazes, but he’s already talking, his mouth also apparently disconnected from his brain.

“Say what, Rogers?” Fury pins the glower on Steve.

“Me--” Steve says. “And Bar--Bucky.”

All of a sudden, Steve hears a harsh inhale to his left.

“You and Barnes will what?” Fury says slowly.

“We’ll--we can do it,” Steve says. “We can compete in pairs.”

What happens after, Steve doesn’t know, because, personally, he thinks his brain blacks out after that.

**

Bucky cannot believe his whole fucking ears.

There he is, standing on his own two feet, glaring at Fury, glaring at the room of skaters, glaring at the International Skating Union because why the fuck is he in this conference room listening to Fury congratulate the skaters who _did_ qualify when he could be at home trying to kill himself--just kidding, ha ha, morbid humor, good one Bucky--when, out of nowhere, it happens again.

Or, more accurately, Steve fucking Rogers happens again.

At first, he doesn’t think he’s heard properly.

And then a dozen faces turn to look at him and Coulson is looking at him and Fury is _glaring_ at him and oh he’s going to kill him, Bucky is absolutely going to fucking finish Steve for real this time--

“I--” he starts, but Steve, who apparently doesn’t know when to quit when he’s fucking ahead, like really, did he get dropped on his head as a kid or what, barrels on.

“Bucky and I didn’t have the best individual performances today,” he says. “But we’ve been working toward this our entire lives, Coach Fury. We’re good individually and we’re good together. You’ve seen us. We’ve grown up skating together. We can do this.”

Fury’s glaring intensifies so thoroughly that Bucky is surprised he doesn’t evaporate on the spot and, honestly, half-wishes that he would.

Steve, however, holds his gaze. The absolute _balls_ on him.

“What makes you think,” Fury says slowly. “That I’d let the two of you compete together. When Murdock and Natchios got themselves knocked out. For fighting. You think I’m stupid, Rogers?”

“No,” Steve says quickly. “Of course not, Coach. But there’s--you’re, uh.”

Steve’s going to evaporate, Bucky’s almost certain, and by God Bucky is looking forward to it. He has never hated someone more.

“What, Rogers?” Fury barks. “Out with it.”

“You’re missing one critical piece of information,” Steve says and offers a smile that not even he looks like he believes.

Fury’s one eye turns into the eye of Sauron. Let Steve be smote, Bucky begs. Please let him be smoted.

“We’re--” Steve starts and Bucky knows, without a single fucking doubt, he knows in the depths of his soul what’s going to happen a second before it does. He doesn’t have time to screech or interrupt Steve, he’s a heartbeat too late, because he opens his mouth in horror, but Steve Rogers has already said it-- “dating. Me and Bucky. We’re together.”

If the silence in the room was eerie before, now it’s deafening.

Bucky can almost see Natasha’s eyebrow twitch from across the room.

“So,” Steve says, clearing his throat. “We won’t fight. We’ll work as hard as we need to. Take a chance on us Coach.”

And then, because Steve Rogers is an absolutely stupid and suicidal little fucker, he says--

“What have you got to lose?”

**

It shouldn’t work.

By all measures, all counts, all logic, it should absolutely not, under any circumstances, work.

“That something we can do?” Fury asks, eye swiveling to Coulson.

Steve holds his breath.

Coulson looks at a loss for words.

“I...will check with the Board,” Coulson says carefully.

There’s a second of pure, fraught silence.

Fury grunts.

“Pairs, go to Coulson,” he says. “He’ll give you your packets.”

Fury turns on his heels and leaves the room.

Everyone in the room seems to sway together to the same, stunned, shocked, aftermath of whatever just happened. Then they all erupt into chatter.

  
Bucky’s hand is on Steve’s elbow within seconds. Everyone’s watching them, but Bucky must not care, because he drags Steve out of the conference room and into the hallway.

Steve barely has a chance to open his mouth before he gets slammed against the wall.

“What the _fuck_ do you think you’re doing?” Bucky hisses.

Admittedly, now that Steve has regained use of his faculties, at least momentarily, he thinks maybe opening his mouth without a plan or a filter hadn’t been the smartest idea, but hell if he’s going to let Bucky know that.

“I’m getting us to the table,” Steve hisses back. “I’m fixing what we fucked up.”

“What are you talking about?” Bucky says. He’s clearly furious, but he keeps his voice low so no one can accuse them of fighting.

“Listen,” Steve says. He gulps down a breath, trying to calm himself, clear his head so he can explain. “You hate me. And I can’t fucking stand you.”

Bucky’s eyes narrow with the force of his glare.

“But this is our dream. We’ve been dreaming of the Olympics since we were _kids_ ,” Steve hisses. “We’ve been talking about it since we put on skates. And we both fucked up. We massively fucked up today. This is our _chance_.”

“To what, Steve?” Bucky says angrily. “Skate together? Skating in pairs is _not_ the same as individuals. We don’t know the first thing about it.”

“Come on,” Steve says. “How different can it be? How hard can it be?”

Bucky stares at Steve like he genuinely, seriously thinks he’s looney tunes.

“You really _are_ crazy,” Bucky says in awe.

“Tell me you don’t want this, Bucky,” Steve says. “Tell me you don’t want to go to the Olympics, no matter what it takes. In four years, you’re gonna be 27. You know as well as I do there’s no guarantee you’ll ever be as good as you are right now. You know the older we get the more we lose our athleticism. I know it’s...fucking insane, I’m not stupid, I know this isn’t normal. But it gets us there. It gives us a chance to compete, even if we have to do it together.”

Bucky closes his eyes. He takes in a deep, shaky breath and releases it. His body is taut, rigid with what looks like frustration and not a little anxiety.

Steve doesn’t think he’s going to go for this. He opens his mouth to argue his point some more, but then Bucky opens his eyes with a glare.

“Do you know what you’re saying?” he asks. “They think--everyone thinks we’re together, Steve. They think we’re _dating_.”

“So what?” Steve asks. “We both know you’re not.”

Bucky looks so outraged that Steve has to speak quickly to keep him from yelling.

“You’re married to this sport, Bucky,” Steve says. “It’s your significant other, your one true love. Your number one priority. I know I’m right because it’s the same for me.”

“Don’t act like we’re the same,” Bucky hisses and Steve lets out a frustrated exhale.

“Just _listen_ to me,” Steve says. “The Olympics are two months away and they only last a month. That’s all we have to do. Pretend to be together for three months and in the meantime prepare some routines. Bucky, I have grown up watching you skate and skating against you. Try to tell me you don’t know everything about how I skate.”

Steve knows he does. Bucky’s too good a competitor to not study his competition and for almost his entire life, his biggest competition has been Steve.

Steve knows Bucky’s skating like he knows his own. And he would bet his life that Bucky knows his skating similarly.

Bucky looks like there are multiple thoughts warring in his head. Steve thinks he can guess them--the ludicrousness of this situation fighting with a fear that they’ll get caught struggling against his immense disdain of Steve and his desire to win, his dream to compete at the Olympics.

Steve has all of the same fears. His brain is processing all of the same anxieties.

But in the bottom of his heart he knows he’s right too--that for everything else, he loves figure skating more than anything else and he would do anything to make sure he can be there, at the Olympics, skating for his life.

Bucky finally exhales.

He looks like someone’s punched him in the gut.

“This is so fucking stupid,” Bucky says. “And so dangerous. I hate you. I really fucking _hate_ you.”

“I know,” Steve says, taking a fortifying breath. “I hate you too.”

“But,” Bucky says. He lets Steve go and backs away. He runs a hand through his hair.

“Yeah?” Steve straightens himself.

“I can do it,” Bucky says quietly. “I’ll do it. For the Olympics. Pretend, for three months.”

Steve feels--he didn’t realize that he was waiting for this, but the relief sweeping through him is overwhelming. His knees nearly buckle under the weight of it.

“But Steve,” Bucky says and his voice is low and threatening again.

Steve watches him, the way Bucky’s eyes flash angrily, the way his jaw tightens again.

“After this is over,” Bucky says. “After these three months and the Olympics--after all of this is through.”

Steve just looks at him.

“I never want to talk to you again,” Bucky says.

Bucky crosses his arms. Then he turns on his heels and walks away in disgust.

  
It doesn’t feel good, watching Bucky go like that, knowing he loathes him. Steve knows he’s made an impulsive, reckless mess of things, that they’re playing a dangerous game here.

But he also knows that this is the Olympics, that this is his dream. That this is--was his mother’s dream too.

And Steve will do anything for that, to make Sarah Rogers proud.

Wherever she is.

**

 _The U.S. Figure Skating International Committee is pleased to announce the following individuals have been selected to represent the United States at the 2018 Winter Olympics in Birnin Zana, Wakanda:_  


 

> ******MEN’S SINGLE TEAM**  
>  Loki Laufeyson  
>  Erik Stevens  
>  Peter Parker  
>    
>  **WOMEN’S SINGLE TEAM**  
>  Natasha Romanoff  
>  Pepper Potts  
>  Carol Danvers  
>    
>  **ICE DANCE**  
>  Bruce Banner and Betty Ross  
>  Gamora Titan and Nebula Titan  
>    
>  **PAIRS  
>  ** Tony Stark and James Rhodes  
>  James Buchanan Barnes and Steve Rogers


	5. four. (wakanda)

Steve will never be able to fully account for what happens over the next two months. He leaves the qualifying competition feeling frustrated and disappointed, but with a kernel of hope that is so ridiculous and overblown that it’s a genuine shock when Coulson calls him to deliver the news.

Everything after then is a blur that he only starts processing once he’s on the plane with the rest of the team, on the way to Wakanda.

Fury calls both him and Bucky in and tells them the rules--they have to pick music, they have to choreograph their routines, they have to prove to him that they won’t embarrass U.S. Figure Skating, and, most importantly--he says this with an overbearing one-eyed glare-- _they cannot fucking fight_. They have two months to do all of this, which means that Steve goes from seeing Bucky Barnes a handful of times a season to three times a day, every single day. They’re at the gym together in the morning, at the studio to learn choreography, a break for lunch, then to the rink to practice on ice. They work together, train together, from 7 am until their bodies are aching and they’re on the verge of snapping at each other a good 14 hours later.

It’s easy enough to bluster to Fury in the middle of a room of figure skaters about how well he and Bucky know each other and skate together when he’s throwing a hail mary, one last ditch effort to make it onto the U.S. Olympics team. It’s another thing entirely to actually be there on the ice with Bucky, forced to run choreography with him, synchronize moves with him, hang over him in the harness, jump and hope that he catches him. 

Individuals’ skating is different in a way that Steve hadn’t realized before--at the beginning and end of every performance, Steve is reliant only upon his own skills, only upon what he can control and those things that physics can.

This is different.

This is harder.

Pairs is as much a mental game as a physical one and Steve and Bucky realize that almost immediately. Whenever Fury is around they school their tempers, but it’s easy enough to tell that they aren’t connecting, that whatever chemistry is between them doesn’t translate to smooth dance on the ice, but to something tense and blocky, the awkward moves apparent to the naked eye.

The problem, which Steve realizes after the third day of practice--frustrating, 14 hours of him and Bucky barely speaking to each other and only doing so to snipe at one another, just keeping from coming to blows and only then because they know Coulson will report back to Fury--is that pairs figure skating is made up of two people. At the beginning and end of every performance, it’s two individuals, not one. Pairs figure skating is about trusting your partner and Steve--Steve doesn’t trust Bucky.

Coulson, to his credit, doesn’t call them out when they miss connections or fall out sync. He doesn’t disparage them when they’re on different beats or even raise his eyebrows when one jumps and the other only barely catches him. One particularly brutal practice, Steve skates into a jump, thinking Bucky will anticipate his needs, and Bucky thinks something else is happening, and Steve ends up falling to the ice, painfully, just crashing down.

Steve’s had it by then and when Bucky tries to half-assedly apologize, he shoves him on the ice. The two of them get into each other’s faces within seconds, Steve’s hands on Bucky’s shirt and Bucky’s hands on Steve’s and the two of them are red, getting ready to curse each other out, when Coulson steps onto the ice, shoves himself between them.

“ _Cool_ _it_ ,” he says. “Take a break, both of you. Get your heads on straight and don’t come back until you do. You two appreciate each other off the ice, right? Go do whatever you need to do at home.”

Steve and Bucky only stutter then, remembering their elaborate lie. They let go of each other and stalk off the ice.

They don’t talk, or even look at each other, but when they come back to the ice fifteen minutes later, they’ve both managed to calm down. They go through the routine again and it’s stiff, awkward even, but it doesn’t come to a yelling match, so Coulson counts it a success.

They spend the months in this way, practicing until their bodies ache, listening to the same, generic skating music until they’re going out of their minds with it, trying to find some kind of rhythm on the ice so they don’t embarrass themselves in Wakanda, and always, always, spending too much time together.

By the time the team boards the official plane to Wakanda, Steve is so sick of Bucky and tired of everything else that he nearly sighs in relief at the prospect of being surrounded by a bunch of other athletes for the next month.

That is until they go to board the plane and he realizes all of the pods are taken except--

Bucky looks at him listlessly, his headphones on over his ears.

Steve can’t even muster the energy to glare at him. He just jerks his head toward the empty pod and Bucky shrugs.

Steve takes the seat and Bucky turns on some movie and the two of them don’t speak to one another again for the entirety of the sixteen hour flight.

**

They land in Wakanda while the sun is still high in the sky. The athletes are shuttled off the plane and over to the airport terminal in buses that barely touch the ground. That’s their first indication that Wakanda is unlike any other place they’ve ever been.

The second is when they step into a private train shuttle, powered by some advanced mechanics they’ve never seen before, that takes the team from the airport to Olympic Village.

Steve’s seen pictures of Olympic Villages of the past. They’re clusters of pristine white and sometimes chrome high rises with colorful flags draped against them. Olympic Village is where all of the athletes, officials, and trainers stay during the course of the competition. Security prowls the area to keep reporters and other unsavory individuals away, granting their live-in guests the utmost privacy for the month. In most Olympic Villages, the security is human and the only way to access the high rise buildings is through special-issued IDs.

In Wakanda, everything is different.

Instead of a semi-circle cluster of white high rises, Wakanda’s Olympic VIllage gleams in bright blues and silver, glass structures that aren’t so much tall buildings as buildings that turn into shapes. There’s one that looks like the edge of a Samurai blade, another that’s a half circle. There’s one that twists in the middle and one that looks like an oval and yet another one that’s a box within a box. The glass should be see-through, a security and privacy hazard, but it isn’t. The sun and everything external to the buildings reflect off of the glass panes, like two-way mirrors. Every once in a while, the entire facade of the glass buildings ripple as an image of the Wakandan flag shimmers into view.

Steve and the other athletes have to pass through four different security checks to get to their buildings. Two are human and two are technology. Steve gets his eyes scanned, his nose scanned, his fingerprint, his palm, even his tongue. Finally, when every part of him is in the system, the clear screen in front of him flashes green.

“Welcome, Steve Rogers,” an accented voice says. “To access Olympic Village, all you will need is your thumbprint.”

“Luckily, I don’t go anywhere without mine,” Steve mutters to the computer and steps through.

  
The U.S. Winter Olympics Team is all hosted in the oval building, as it turns out. There are so many people buzzing around outside, in between the buildings and waiting to get into this specific one, that Steve’s head spins just a little bit.

It’s almost a blessing and a relief when Fury barks at all of the skaters to gather around.

“Rooming assignments,” he shouts over the din. “Romanoff and Potts, you’re sharing a suite with Gamora and Nebula. Stark and Rhodes, you’re together, sharing with Parker and Banner.”

Steve’s both tired and wired at once. The jet lag is making him a little woozy, but everywhere he looks he sees Wakanda and sprawled all over Wakanda are athletes from all countries, jabbering away in their native language, wearing jackets bearing the flag of their native countries or, at least, the countries they’re representing.

Steve feels the American flag on his chest like an anvil. There’s a lot riding on this. There’s everything riding on this.

He swallows, wishing he could call his Ma and tell her how it feels. He never expected to get this far without her.

“Odinson and Laufeyson, you’re together,” Coulson, who’s apparently helping Fury, tries to raise his voice. “You’ll be with Stevens and Volstagg.”

Everyone shuffles around him as they receive their rooming assignments. Steve’s just about to turn to say something to Sam when he hears his name.

“Barnes! You and Rogers,” Fury shouts. “Rooming with--Wilson and Barton? One’s hockey, the other’s biathalon. Play nice.”

Steve didn’t know it was possible for someone’s stomach to plumet that fast, but it does, just falls straight through his middle to his toes.

He tries not to let the disgust show on his face.

Next to him, Sam nudges him a little.

“Look happy,” he hisses into Steve’s ear. “To be rooming with your _boyfriend_.”

Sam knows, of course. Steve tells Sam everything.

Steve swallows the bitterness he feels and smiles.

“Great,” he says. It doesn’t take long to spot Bucky, who’s standing next to Natasha as usual. She’s leaning over to say something to him and he’s looking straight at Steve from across their little crowd.

Steve’s stomach simmers, the way it always does whenever Bucky so much as _looks_ at him.

He blows him a kiss.

Bucky looks for a moment like he’s going to be sick. Then he smiles and pretends to catch it.

Now _Steve’s_ going to be sick.

“Come on,” Sam mutters, hand on Steve’s elbow. “Got time for your fake drama later. Let’s go check out our suite.”

  
Their suite, as it so happens, is kind of fucking awesome. The suite is comprised of two enormous, private rooms, connected by a small hallway, a kitchen, and a shared living room. The two rooms have two beds each, which is a relief, and state of the art bathrooms with large mirrors, chrome finishing, and technological everything. Steve’s never seen anything like it, the buttons, the screens, the way he walks into the bedroom and it greets him.

_Hello Steven Grant Rogers, pairs figure skating. Do you have any special needs today?_

Steve blinks at the disembodied voice uncertainly.

“Uh,” he says. “I don’t...think so?”

_Very good. If you need my assistance, simply speak your desire in a raised voice._

It weirds Steve out a little bit, but he doesn’t have much time to linger in the bathroom with 31st century technology before he hears voices in the common areas. Sam’s already there checking out his own room. Steve hears Clint come in loudly, his luggage banging into all manners of surface.

Steve closes the door behind him and pulls his own suitcase to the bed closest to the window. He leaves it there to unpack later and explores all of the nooks and crannies of his room. There are two enormous closets, two dressers, a television screen that’s built into the wall itself, and a table that has on it what appears to be a care package.

Steve looks closer, intrigued by the fruits he can’t recognize, an assortment of protein bars, teas, coffees, and--

He cringes back, flushing.

“Oh, you’re here,” an unhappy voice says behind him.

Steve whips around and sees Bucky and flushes some more.

“What’s wrong with you?” Bucky asks immediately, frowning.

“Nothing--” Steve coughs unconvincingly.

“What--?” Bucky raises his voice again, sounding annoyed. When Steve doesn’t answer in time, he leaves his suitcase by his bed and comes over to look at the table.

It takes a moment for him to spot it, but when he does, he coughs too.

“Grow up,” he says. “It’s just condoms and lube.”

Bucky turns away, as though disdainful, but Steve can see the pink crawl up his neck too.

“Hey!” another voice interrupts their awkward moment. Clint comes in, happy as a peach. He throws himself onto Bucky’s bed, which makes the other boy looks distinctly displeased. “Isn’t this place _amazing_? I’ve never seen anything like it. My bathroom talked to me! And did you see--”

Clint cranes his head up, looking at the nearly overflowing bowl that Steve and Bucky had been squawking over a moment ago.

“Yeah!” Clint grins. “We got a whole bowl too.”

“Optimistic, aren’t they?” Steve mutters.

“What are you talking about?” Clint sighs. He throws himself back onto the bed again. “We’re young, hot, virile, extremely fit athletes with pent up energy and more stress than we know what to do with. How else are we supposed to release that?”

“Your performance?” Bucky says and, surprisingly, he sounds annoyed too. “We’re here to compete, not to sleep around, Barton.”

“Why not both?” Clint asks with a shrug.

“What are you hooligans doing in here?” Sam pops his head into the doorway. “Thanks for the invite, wow.”

“This is what we call unwanted company,” Steve says and doesn’t clarify if he means Clint or Bucky or both.

“My company’s always wanted,” Sam says with a grin.

“Why didn’t you two get roomed together?” Clint asks suddenly. He props himself up on one elbow.

Steve, Bucky, and Sam pause.

“You can switch if you want,” Clint says, looking between Sam and Steve. “I don’t mind rooming with Barnes.”

“What if I mind rooming with you?” Bucky asks and Clint just grins at him.

“We can’t reassign our rooms,” Sam says with a shrug. “They’re programmed in. Some of the hockey players already tried and the uh disembodied voice was very stern. This place is wild.”

Any remaining hope Steve had that he could at least avoid Bucky at Olympic Village during the next month evaporates. He tries not to show it on his face.

“Anyway,” Sam says out loud. He doesn’t shoot Steve A Look, but Steve can hear it in his voice. “Steve and Bucky are _dating_. We should let the love birds share the room.”

“Wait--” Clint’s eyes widen and Steve only barely keeps from glaring at Sam. “Bird man say _what_?”

“Oh yeah,” Sam says. “They announced it all dramatic-like. Isn’t that right, you two?”

It’s likely that Sam is trying to help Steve and Bucky maintain their cover, but it’s equally likely that he’s just an asshole bent on ruining Steve’s life.

“It wasn’t dramatic,” Steve mutters and he can almost feel the weight of Bucky’s disdain thrown at him.

“Since when?” Clint asks, looking between the two of them rapidly. “I thought you two hated each other.”

“What made you think that?” Bucky asks this time, teeth gritted, because _that’s_ believable.

“Uh just you know,” Clint says. “The past what, twelve years of your relationship?”

“You know what they say about love and hate,” Steve says.

“They’re two different emotions?” Clint offers.

“It’s a fine line,” Steve gripes.

Bucky sighs and Sam looks like he’s on the verge of laughter.

“Uh huh,” Clint says. He looks between the two of them suspiciously and Steve thinks they’re about to fail their first real test, but then he shrugs and falls back on the bed. Steve always forgets that Clint has the attention span of a goldfish. “Just don’t be loud about it. Some of us have to get our beauty sleep. We’re here to _perform_ , after all.”

“Can you get off my bed?” Bucky asks and nudges Clint’s side with his knee.

“Rude!” Clint says and simply rolls over.

“Okay, I’ve had enough of this circus,” Sam says. “I’m starving. Let’s go see what Wakanda has to feed us.”

  
The rest of their day is unaccounted for, which means that most athletes spend the day resting, eating, and running into other athletes in Olympic Village. Steve spends most of the day with Sam and Clint, ignoring Bucky’s presence when at all possible, and other times--when people come up to them and ask them how they’re feeling about their new event, and how brave they think they are for doing what they did, coming out and announcing their love to the world at the same time, or whatever--holding his hand against his will.

Bucky’s none too pleased about it either, but the first time it happens, Sam shoots both of them a look that says _you’re both playing with fire at least act like you’ve touched before_ and Bucky grabs his hand and kisses Steve’s temple.

Steve has to actively fight not to recoil from it, but he must manage because the British figure skater beams at both of them and asks to take a picture with them.

The next time it happens it’s an ice dancing pair from China and Steve takes a small breath before leaning into Bucky. Bucky’s rigid against him, but puts his arm around Steve after a second.

It doesn’t get more pleasant, but it gets slightly easier, just out of sheer frequency. People keep coming up to them, inexplicably.

“What the hell?” Steve mutters after the third or fourth person wishes them luck.

“You did this to us,” Bucky hisses in Steve’s ear.

They’re still in the process of detangling after their latest lukewarm embrace.

“Are you here at the Olympics or not?” Steve hisses back.

Bucky glares daggers at him and Steve finds it exceptionally difficult to not flip him off.

Luckily, Sam spots one of the dining structures just in time. They spring apart and follow him into the dining hall of their dreams. The hall is tall, brightly lit, with stations teeming with hot, fresh food. There’s some kind of poultry bar and some kind of fish bar and an area dedicated entirely to carbs, what with all of the athletes. There’s a station for desserts and a station for vegans. When they step in, there’s another eye scanner that documents any food restrictions they might have and allows them a chance to key in any religious restrictions it didn’t catch.

“Steve Rogers,” one of the stations chirps at him. “Allergic to shellfish, stone fruit, tree nuts. Low in iron. Lactose intolerant. Please proceed to station 11.”

Steve is a little in awe of it all and follows instructions while ignoring Bucky shooting him a look of disbelief at the long list of foods his body can’t handle.

Steve ignores him and is delighted to have some cyborg-looking attendant serve him an entire tray of customized food that won’t make him die and, as a bonus, smells _delicious_. He’s in a great mood until he gets back to the table Clint and Sam have claimed for them. He only barely suppresses a sigh when he goes to sit down and Clint beams at Steve and Bucky and clearly leaves two seats next to each other open for them.   


Eventually Sam goes to meet up with the hockey players and Clint finds some diverse group of biathalon athletes he gets distracted by--some apparently engrossing conversation about gun angles or something that Steve could not possibly care less about--and Steve and Bucky are left just to themselves.

It’s the first time in a whirlwind 48 hours that Steve gets even a modicum of peace.

Minus the guy next to him, his fake boyfriend, who hates his guts.

The two of them linger for one, intensely awkward minute.

Then Bucky mumbles, “I want to go check out the training arena.”

Steve considers taking that as a sign to relieve himself of Bucky’s company. It would be a breath of fresh air, to just be by himself and not by this constant cloud of ire that floats next to him. But then, once he takes a second to think about it, he remembers this isn’t about him or even about them. This is about their skating.

He takes a breath.

“Mind if I go with you?”

Bucky doesn’t look like he was expecting that and the pregnant pause only makes Steve feel more awkward about it. He’s about to say never mind, when Bucky shrugs.

“Sure,” he says. “Might as well.”

It’s not the warmest of receptions, but it’s not the worst, so Steve supposes it’s a win in its own way.

“Cool,” he says. He sticks his hands in his pockets and the two of them wander through Olympic Village to the shuttle to the training arenas in silence.

  
The training rink for figure skating looks like a rippling, metal dome. The sky reflects off of its smooth, perfect surface, almost like the dome is taking the sky in and throwing its image back out at it. The entrance requires a retinal scan and a breath test and once another disembodied voice identifies Steve and Bucky and affirms they’ve passed the breathalyzer examination, the doors open for them to go in.

The arena isn’t empty at all.

There are skaters walking around the outer perimeter, scoping out the training rink and talking lightly. There are even a few skaters out on the ice itself, although it seems they’re mostly skating around in lazy circles, trying to get used to the ice.

Not every ice rink is the same, but every ice rink does make Steve feel like he’s come home. Whatever tension he’s been carrying from the traveling, from the rooming situation, from Olympic Village, all of it seems to drain out of him. He hadn’t realized he was holding his shoulders so high until they slump back down to a normal level.

Next to him, Steve sees Bucky take a breath too.

“Come on,” Bucky says. “Let’s get closer.”

  
Once they get next to the rink, Steve feels that familiar itch under his skin, an unsettled nervous energy, like he can never be close enough to the ice. He drums his fingers against the top of the low rink wall and wishes he had brought his skates. He doesn’t want to do flips or anything fancy. He just wants to be out there, feel the slick, cold surface under the blades of his shoes. He wants to be like the skaters out there now, just looping around the edge, arms outstretched, body relaxed.

He just needs to relax, he thinks.

He hasn’t been thinking about it and he doesn’t plan to start now, but the enormity of his situation weighs on him heavily, the expectations, the colossal risk of failure.

He must make some kind of a noise because Bucky lets out a sigh next to him.

Steve readies himself for some kind of irritated retort, but Bucky just leans forward.

“Wish I’d brought my skates,” he says.

Steve doesn’t really know what to do with that. He and Bucky aren’t really on speaking terms. They’re barely even civil to one another. But they’re both here together and for once Bucky doesn’t look like the only thing on his mind is how much he hates Steve. Steve’s not unhappy to just let his guard down for a minute.

“Yeah,” he says. “We should have known better.”

Bucky makes a kind of hum of approval and they enviously watch the other skates lope around for a while.

“It still hasn’t hit me,” Bucky says after a minute. “That we’re here.”

Steve, who has been thinking the same, takes a moment to respond.

“I’ve been waiting for this my entire life,” he says. “Now that we’re here it feels…”

Bucky doesn’t say anything, and then--

“Momentous,” he says. “But also normal.”

“Yeah,” Steve says. He watches a pair--the girl with brown hair and the guy with silver, do a little twist together. “It’s bigger than I can comprehend. But it’s also just...the ice.”

There’s something like a half-smile that flickers onto Bucky’s face.

“Ice is ice everywhere,” he says.

“It’s the one constant,” Steve agrees.

The girl lets go of the guy and Bucky and Steve watch as she skates away from him. He chases her with a laugh. They look happy.

“I never get tired of it,” Steve says quietly, watching them. “I thought, when I was younger, maybe I would. Everyone does, right? People love their sport, stay in it their career, then move on. Sometimes they fall out of love with it even when they’re doing it. But it’s never like that for me. Every time I’m out there, it feels like I’m home.”

Bucky inhales and then lets out a low breath.

“I hate to agree with you, but--” he nods. “Yeah. It’s the only place I never get sick of.”

Steve feels something move in his chest. He feels bigger than himself and smaller at the same time. He feels restless. He feels like he could love skating his entire life.

“I’m sorry,” he says after a few minutes. “I know I should have apologized earlier. I shouldn’t have made that decision for us. I wasn’t thinking.”

Bucky stills next to him. Steve thinks he can see him breathe in and out carefully next to him, like he’s trying to control himself.

But when Steve looks over at him, he just looks calm.

“It was shitty of you to do,” Bucky says. He looks at the girl and guy and then, finally, looks at Steve. “But I get why you did it. It got us here. I might hate you, but I...guess I should thank you.”

It’s the closest Bucky’s ever come to agreeing with him about something.

“It just made sense,” Steve says. “In the moment. How long have we talked about going to the Olympics?”

Something that looks suspiciously like a half smile tugs at the corner of Bucky’s mouth.

“Since we were kids,” Bucky says. “I always told you I’d get there first.”

“And I always said there was no way I was letting you hog all that glory,” Steve says. He remembers with something like a smile too. “You already had a big head.”

“Ass,” Bucky says, but it’s with no bite. In fact, he looks almost amused. “You always were jealous of my hair.”

“Yeah, sure,” Steve snorts. “It wasn’t your head that was big after all, it was your hair. What is it, full of secrets?”

“I love Mean Girls,” Bucky grins. He stretches, hands on the top of the rink wall, back arched behind him.

Steve knows. Once, Bucky had spent an entire competition replying to everything in Mean Girls quotes. Steve had found it so irritating that he had told Bucky to his face that it was the stupidest movie he had ever seen, even though he had never seen it before at all. Bucky had gotten pissed at him and they had gotten into one of the top three stupidest yelling matches of his life.

Later, Steve had begrudgingly watched the movie. It was hilarious.

“Look. We’ve known each other our entire lives,” Steve says. “I don’t trust you and I don’t like you, but I know you love this sport. I know you’re as devoted to it as I am.”

Bucky lets out a shuddering breath and nods.

“Maybe we can do this, Bucky,” Steve says. “Maybe we can pull it off.”

For a moment it seems as though Bucky’s going to consider it. He looks less frozen, lost as he is in the feel of the rink, of being home. He softens, maybe even remembering their stupid fight, how long they’ve known each other--more than half of their lives now. Maybe he feels it too, that there’s no trust here and certainly no affection, but, perhaps, a mutual, grudging kind of respect. Like recognizes like. Devotion recognizes devotion.

Then, the opposite happens. Bucky breathes in and it comes back to life, the stone creeping across his body.

“Sure,” Bucky says, voice hard. “If you don’t abandon us again.”

Steve feels like he’s been slapped across the face. He blinks, his breath picking back up.

“Bucky--” he starts, but Bucky cuts him off.

“We’re not friends, Steve. You got us here and I have to thank you for that, I guess. But we’re not pulling anything off. There’s no _we_. You’re an asshole and a coward and I don’t care how long we’ve known each other, I’m not suddenly going to start sucking your dick because I want to win gold.” It’s mean and it’s meant to hurt and it does. Bucky’s eyes are as hard and cold as his tone.

Steve’s fingers curl into a fist, his nails biting into the palm of his hands.

“We’re _not_ friends,” Bucky says. “I don’t want you to forget that. I meant what I said. After all this is over, I _never_ want to see you again.”

Steve doesn’t have anything to say to that. He simmers in the cocktail of his own feelings, both hurt and frustrated.

“I’m going to see the lockers,” Bucky says when Steve doesn’t immediately reply. “See you later. Or not. I don’t care.”

Whatever tenuous peace that had bridged between them for a precious breath snaps as easily as an ice crystal.

Steve tries to school his breath, control his easily provoked temper. He could stop Bucky, but he doesn’t. He watches him go instead, tries to remind himself that Bucky doesn’t know, that no one knows except Fury and Coulson and Sam and that it was his choice to make it that way.

He tries, but he doesn’t know if he’s successful. He can logic it however he wants to, but it hurts either way.

Steve turns on his heels and leaves the arena, unsettled, frustrated, and anything but at peace.

  
Olympic Village turns into a bright, loud, happy mess of frenetic, social energy that night. Sam and Clint invite Steve to join them, to meet other athletes.

On any other night, Steve would have considered it. He’s not a natural social butterfly, but he’s friendly and can be charming on occasion and he even likes meeting people, even if they never talk about skating as much as he wants to.

But he’s so unsettled tonight, the sharp uptick in nerves spritzing just under his skin, that he doesn’t think he’ll be able to talk without snapping, let alone enjoy himself.

So he feigns a stomach ache and stays in, goes to bed early.

He can’t fall asleep though.

He goes over it in his head, over and over, their routines, his routines, his mother’s routines, Worlds and everything after Worlds. They play in constant loop, like a torture device created by him and for him, specifically meant to drive him slowly mad.

It’s not as though he doesn’t remember everything that happened. He knows every moment of that day, can pin down precisely where he was and what he was feeling and what was happening. Everything after--well, that’s a blur, and everything that came after _that_ was a blur too. But everything before that moment he knows by heart. It catches up to him on nights like this, no matter how desperately he tries to forget.

“It’s up to you,” Fury had said, before Qualifiers. Steve had been on the sidelines for two years at that point. Erskine was patient with him, understanding, even, but patience was never what Steve had needed. He wasn’t afraid to be in the rink, but he was afraid of anything more. He had simply said he wasn’t ready. Fury, a master in interpreting bullshit and impatient as all hell to boot, had seen it for what it was--pure, unadulterated fear.

“I’m not gonna force you. I’m also not gonna lie to you, Rogers, it won’t be easy if you decide to come back. Some people won’t care and some will care too much. Lot of people have been talking about you the past two years. They don’t know. You didn’t want them to know and that’s fine, but this is how it is now,” Fury had said.   
  
“You’re going to have a lot to prove now because of it and there’s a lot of people who will want you to fail. But you’ve got too much _goddamned_ talent to waste watching from the sidelines. What do you want? Think about it.”

And Steve had thought about it.

He thinks he’s done nothing _but_ think about it, since Fury asked.

He’s still thinking about it when Bucky finally comes back to their room. It’s late, but not too late. Olympic Village is a lively roar outside of their window.

Bucky moves around the room, movement almost silent.

He pauses.

“You awake?”

Steve considers answering. But then, he doesn’t need to hear about how much Bucky hates him tonight. Not again.

He closes his eyes and pretends to be asleep.

After a minute, Bucky lets out a relieved breath and starts changing.

Steve can feel his throat burning, the loneliness sitting heavy in his chest.

When he finally falls asleep, he dreams about being on the ice, but he’s all alone, no one to watch him, and no one to catch him if he falls.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ Fun fact: of all of the things I've used my artistic license on for convenience or just straight up made up, [the proliferation of condoms at Olympic Village](https://www.cnn.com/2018/02/01/health/olympic-village-condoms/index.html) is not one of them.


	6. five. (opening ceremony)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Technically it's not midnight yet! A late, short chapter, but there's more to come!

If Olympic Village was a small festival of chattering, energetic, tense athletes the day before, it’s nothing short of a carnival by the next day. Athletes are trickling in by the busload, making the area brighter, louder, more chaotic than ever. Steve can barely make it out of their suite and down the building without bumping into twelve different athletes from five different countries. They don’t all know him, of course, but some of them do, which is strange.

Maybe it had been a big deal, the first openly queer (fake) boyfriends skating in the pairs competition. Steve doesn’t know, he doesn’t really maintain a social media account except to occasionally fight with Bucky and tweet disdain at the President.

But people do know him and they ask about Bucky and he’s always forced to give some kind of fake answer that Steve thinks is obvious as a blatant lie, but which every foreign athlete seems to buy with no question. Perhaps they can’t imagine that the revolutionary happy couple is actually a fake con the said couple is pulling to game the system. So weird.

Anyway, the next day is a complete mess of colors and loud noises and people because everyone is getting ready for the Olympic opening ceremony.

It sounds fun enough, except Steve has a thrill of nerves in his stomach, because the opening ceremony means the opening games and the opening games means competition, and soon.

He doesn’t know if he and Bucky are ready.

He supposes they don’t have time to doubt it one way or another.

Steve walks into his room and there’s the most obnoxious U.S. team gear laid out on his bed. He looks over to Bucky and raises an eyebrow.

The other boy is in a flag jacket and a red hat and yellow shoes, with a flag and stars painted on his face.

Bucky raises an eyebrow back.

“Your skating costume is literally the American flag.”

“I didn’t make it,” Steve mutters, but pulls on the white and red striped windbreaker. He looks like he fell out of a 90s patriotic catalogue, but honestly, he’s kind of into it. He puts the bright red carpenter hat on his head and grins at Bucky. “How do I look?”

“Like Uncle Sam spit up on you,” Bucky says.

“Ah, perfect,” Steve says. “I love America.”

Bucky looks on the verge of actually smiling, so he turns his back on Steve immediately.

“They’re going to want us to--be a couple,” he says. “Or whatever.”

“Yeah,” Steve says, letting out a breath. And then-- “What says couple more than stupid, embarrassing, matching track suits?”

“Guess we’re a couple with the entire team then,” Bucky says.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “You take Tony and I’ll take the rest.”

“Absolutely not,” Bucky says. “I suffered with him during Worlds, it’s your turn.”

“Sorry,” Steve says with a shrug. He puts his patriotic shoes on. “I called dibs on the rest of the team. Next time, be faster.”

“Ugh,” Bucky says. “You’re the worst fake boyfriend I’ve ever had.”

“Thank you,” Steve replies and straightens. “I hope you mean that from the bottom of your heart.”

“I really, really do,” Bucky says.

“Great,” Steve replies, almost smiling. “Now keep that level of romance up for the cameras. It’s very important the entire world sees how in love we are. We’re an inspiration to con men everywhere.”

“This isn’t Ocean’s 8,” Bucky mutters, following Steve out the door.

“I haven’t seen Ocean’s 8,” Steve says.

“I know Steve,” Bucky says and he sounds both disgruntled and pained. “You haven’t seen anything.”

Steve has some kind of retort--that’s not true!--on his lips, but before he can unleash his devastating wit onto his archnemesis, Sam and Clint appear in the living room.

“Hey!” Sam says. “You both look stupid.”

“Hey!” Bucky replies. “Right back at you.”

“USA!” Clint starts chanting. “USA! USA!”

He continues chanting all the way out of their building and to the U.S. team waiting area and unfortunately it’s so stupid and simple and annoying and infectious that by then, the entire team starts doing it too.

It’s only by the grace of God that Steve is eventually rescued because they gather into a group, with their dumb jackets and hats and flags and shoes and their cameras and selfie sticks, and wait to be taken in to the ceremony.

  
Waiting to be taken through the opening ceremony for the Parade of Nations is an energetic, jovial affair. It’s like someone hits the pause button on the competition and, for one night, reminds all of the athletes that they’re here in celebration of their countries, their youth, their athleticism.

Bucky is rarely relaxed, but he lets the wave of optimism and high spirits carry him to a close approximation. It dawns on him in a slow kind of way, the way yolk from a broken egg would trickle down his forehead. They’re here, at the Olympics. He’s on the world’s biggest stage, his life’s ambitions and dreams a mere handful of performances away. That makes him feel it, somewhere deep in his gut, the thrill of being here, the excitement of being so close to something he wants so much.

He stands next to Natasha, hands in his jacket pockets. They’re surrounded by the entire U.S. National Team, athletes from all over the country, competing in events he’s barely even thought of and some he’s never even heard of.

He’s deep in conversation with the frontrunner for women’s Moguls gold, a blond named Trish, by the time it takes most of the rest of the team to trickle in, forming an enormous mob of energetic, laughing, happy Americans. Everyone’s wearing the ridiculous, 90s red-white-and-puffy jackets, an assortment of bright colored Nikes and converses on their feet. There’s face paint and flags and selfie sticks and people, like Clint, who can’t contain themselves. He starts chanting USA! USA! on three separate occasions and it’s so goddamn obnoxious and annoying, but everyone seems to laugh around him, his enthusiasm catching.

Bucky feels lighter than he has in a long, long time.

He’s here.

He’s here and it’s happening and it’s all been worth it.

He spots Steve a few people over, leaning over Sam’s shoulder, presumably taking a selfie with him. He feels it like usual, that familiar, heated twist in his gut, but it’s muted for the day. Even his animosity can’t rival the infectious, almost tangible excitement floating through the air.

“Hey,” Natasha says and nudges his side. “How’s that going?”

He hadn’t even had to tell Natasha the farce that was his “relationship” with Steve. After that whirlwind clusterfuck of a team meeting, she had come up to him, pinched his side, _hard_ , and demanded to know how he could be so fucking stupid.

“I hate him,” Bucky says through gritted teeth that lack their usual conviction. He’s too loose and happy to spend that much energy on Steve Rogers at the moment.

“Yeah I know,” Natasha says dryly. “I have been around you longer than five minutes.”

Bucky shrugs.

He had come back to their room last night, meaning to talk to Steve, but he had fallen asleep by then. He wants this cover story to work, for the sake of Olympic glory, but he can’t help the flashes of anger that boil through him every time he sees Steve and remembers that night during Worlds. Natasha may have forgiven him, but Bucky prizes loyalty above all. Even if he hadn’t been friends with Steve before, he had thought he was reliable, loyal. Now he knows he’s not.

It had rolled through him at the training arena, where he was and who he was with. This wasn’t the Steve of his childhood, this was a different one, colder and more self-interested. Or maybe they were one and the same and Bucky had deluded himself when they were younger, thinking they were similar, that they could be friends one day.

He squashes that thread of thought immediately.

“One word of advice?” Natasha says, watching Bucky watch Steve.

“Do I have a choice?” Bucky mutters.

“No,” Natasha says. She crosses her arms. “If you want to sell this, you have to go for it.”

“What?” Bucky frowns.

“You’re half-assing this thing. There’s no easier way to get caught. You want to be in a fake relationship for Olympic gold? Go for it,” Natasha says, her voice low. “But you have to commit to it. Don’t let anyone see the cracks. Give it all you’ve got.”

Bucky crosses his arms in response, the scowl easy on his face. 

“And buddy, you have a _lot_ of cracks.”  
  
He watches Steve straighten, his face pink and happy, wrinkling his nose at something, Sam laughing in his face.  
  
Then he sighs, his shoulders slumping.

“I always like the moment you realize I’m right,” Natasha says, pleased.

“You’re the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” Bucky mutters.

“That’s because you don’t have to deal with your stupid ass,” Natasha says. “Go to him. Leave me in peace.”

The crowd between them nearly reverberates with anticipation and pride. Then it starts moving.

Bucky takes a breath and slips past the ice dancers, three skiers, a snowboarder, and Thor.

“Barnes!” Thor booms before he gets away. “Are you looking for Rogers?”

Bucky tries to look eager and not the more general approximation of dread he feels.

“Yeah,” he says. “Have you seen him?”

“I believe he’s up there with Sam,” Thor says, pointing just ahead of him. Thor towers above most of the other athletes, big, blond, and Scandinavian.

“Thanks,” Bucky says and tries to skirt by, but Thor places a hand on his shoulder and looks into his eyes.

“I think what you did was very brave,” he says, deep and earnest. “I wish nothing but success and happiness for you and Rogers.”

Bucky tries not to cringe.

“Yeah uh—thanks,” he says.

Thor beams.

“I thought them rivals!” Thor says loudly, turning to another member of his team. “But they were lovers all along!”

Bucky only barely resists the urge to stab himself in the eyeballs.

The group moves toward the entrance that will lead them into the arena. From inside, Bucky can hear music filtering through, the sound of singing and strings and drums that thump into his blood. He doesn’t know what Wakanda has done to show the world a Wakanda opening ceremony, but he knows it’s going to be magnificent.

He knows it’s all going to be magnificent.

The group grows louder, everyone drunk on their own excitement.

Bucky finds Steve just before Rhodey, who’s the flag bearer, breaks into the arena.

Steve is talking to Sam and to Clint, back straight, head leaned forward to hear them better. He’s relaxed, excited even. He’s smiling.

Bucky takes a breath and goes.

  
Steve doesn’t expect it, so he’s freezes when he feels an arm slide across his shoulder. When he jerks to see who it is, he almost elbows Bucky in the sternum. For a moment he forgets this is supposed to be their new normal. He glares just before Bucky gives him the fakest, warmest grin he apparently can manage.

“Hi honey,” he says. “Did you miss me?”

Steve barely has the chance to stumble over his words before Bucky leans close and gives him a loud kiss on the cheek.

This time Steve elbows him hard on purpose.

Bucky looks both in pain and fucking delighted.

“Oh…” Steve recovers. “Yeah…”

Bucky catches his breath and looks like he’s about to laugh, which would irritate Steve if he wasn’t still caught off guard by the cheek kiss.

“I felt you pining from miles away,” Bucky says.

“Wish you were miles away,” Steve mutters, which only makes Bucky grin more.

“Come on, you lovebirds,” Sam says in the middle of all of this, raising an eyebrow at the two of them. “It’s starting.”

Steve looks from Sam to the movement in front of him and then back to Bucky.

When he had thought of this moment, all throughout his youth, this wasn’t the way he had imagined it. He had imagined him, by himself, surrounded by the nerves of the moment and maybe a few friends. This area between thrill and discomfort, a fake boyfriend by his side and his mother gone—well, that he never accounted for.

But never let it be said that Steve Rogers wouldn’t do absolutely anything for the sport he loves above all. He takes a breath and then offers Bucky his hand.

“Ready, honeybun?” he asks, with a sweet, shit-eating smile.

Bucky just smirks and takes his hand.

“Anything with you, cinnamon roll.”

Steve only manages to keep from rolling his eyes because they push through the entrance and then they’re out into the arena and it’s magic.

  
The opening ceremony, Steve will remember later, is a marvel burned deep into his eyelids. The Parade of Nations is both long and short, punctuated by cheering, chanting, and a raucous round of singing that Clint, of course, starts and is so infectious that all of the Americans end up laughing and swaying together in terrible, off-key singing.

Steve lets Sam take pictures of them on his phone and Clint holds up a selfie stick and takes a group shot and Steve looks at the world around him, the vast, incomprehensible moment that eclipses him and his small grievances. Peter Parker tries to jump onto Tony Stark’s shoulder and Rhodey almost drops the flag on Tony’s head and Bucky holds Steve’s hand the entire time. Steve sometimes tugs him forward and Bucky sometimes tug him sideways and when people ask them for pictures, they make faces and shove each other and oblige.

Little drones fly around, dropping whole flowers from the sky that land softly on their heads. Steve sneezes at one and Bucky laughs so hard that Steve pinches his side. Natasha catches up to them, makes them take a picture of her surrounded by falling flower petals. She wears a flower as a crown and looks as whimsical as she has ever looked and will ever look again.

Sometimes, someone pulls Bucky away, and other times Steve stops to take a video, the glamor around them glittering against his ribcage. He feels his heart grow bigger than his chest and when Bucky reappears, he gets caught up in the moment and their lie and leans forward, kisses his jaw.

Bucky looks slack-jawed with surprise and wrinkles his face and Steve, so distracted by this dream of a life he’s living, laughs and kisses him again. Someone whistles at them and Steve flips them off, raises two fists as though he’s going to play fight them, and Bucky grabs him by his waist and lifts him up and twirls him around, setting him back down again when Steve is a little dizzy and a little breathless. Flower petals turn to little sparks of light, setting them all aglow. Steve laughs more than he has in months and feels like maybe everything is going to be all right after all.

  
Sam teases them and Clint makes gagging sounds and the lights start floating, illuminating every surface they touch. Ahead of them, the U.S. flag billows and Steve thinks this is a moment he’ll remember for the rest of his life. He wonders what his mother will do when he tells her about this, and then he remembers she never will.

“Oh, look at the lights,” someone--Peter, breathes out, as the stadium lights dim and pops of even more lights shimmer into the air, like pinpricks of stars illuminating the middle of the arena and spilling across all of them.

On his skin, Steve can see the lights embedded in, paint he can’t scrub off. He looks across to Bucky and there’s lights in his hair, on his eyelashes, brushing against his cheekbones. He closes his eyes and _glows_. It hits him like an anvil, knocks the breath out of him as they come to a stop in their designated area and the opening ceremony begins.

The lights in the sky swirl around each other, burning brighter, and Wakanda begins to pulse, vibrant and sweeping and so, very alive. Steve sways on his feet, quiet with resplendence and grief.

He feels wet warmth on his cheeks and that, too, seems to glow.

Bucky frowns and waits until the drums begin beating, the Dora Milaje starting their dance, to lean over.

“Steve?” he asks.

Steve swallows, the lump hard in his throat, the feeling in his chest like a vise gripping him tight.

“It’s beautiful,” he manages, which is a half truth anyway.

Bucky doesn’t look like he believes him, but he nods anyway. He lets go of Steve’s hand and moves away and Steve feels it again, that sharp ache of loneliness.

He watches Bucky bend toward Clint and Sam whisper to Natasha and he thinks the only person in the world he wants to share this moment with is gone, and she’ll never come back.

  
The ceremony is like a visible, tangible crescendo, filling everything in the arena with a vibrancy of life and technology that sets everyone vibrating. It’s the most devastatingly impressive and beautiful thing Steve has ever seen. It catches in his chest, stays there until he can press a hand to it and feel the warmth it gives.

A reporter from NBC catches them after, with a smile and a microphone.

“Steve,” the woman asks with a kind smile. “Was it a dream?”

“It feels like one,” Steve manages to answer, tired and elated and sad.

“Who are you sharing this dream with, then?” the woman asks and her eyes flicker to Bucky, somewhere behind him.

Steve knows the answer she wants and he knows the answer he has to give.

“Someone special,” he says quietly. He remembers his mother’s eyes and her smile, but it’s Bucky who braces an arm against his lower back and leans against him.

It feels like the worst kind of lie, so Steve just closes his eyes and lets someone else talk for him.

  
He’s lower than he’s been in a while that night when he gets back to his room. The competitions start tomorrow and he and Bucky have an early training session with Fury in the morning, but he can’t seem to get out of his head long enough to fall asleep.

He tries to go to bed, but ends up tossing and turning so much that Bucky, from his side of the room, turns on the light in irritation.

“Are you always like this?” he asks, voice thick with sleep.

Steve, who can’t seem to get comfortable in his own bed, stills, looking up at the ceiling.

“No,” he says after a minute.

“Is everything okay?” Bucky asks after a minute, a little softly.

“No,” Steve says, answering honestly before he can think to lie. He feels miserable as soon as he’s admitted it.

Bucky is quiet for long enough that Steve thinks he’s fallen back asleep.

“Do you want to talk about it?” he finally asks.

Steve thinks about it, admitting to Bucky how much he misses his mother, how this all feels empty without her. How he doesn’t think he can do this, any of it, without having her kiss his forehead one more time. His throat constricts. He can’t think of anything he’d like less.

“No,” Steve says, maybe too sharply.

Bucky pauses again and then turns off the light.

“Whatever,” he says and his voice is hard again. “Goodnight.”

Steve doesn’t feel like a dick, but he doesn’t feel good about it either. He doesn’t feel good about anything.

He turns on his side and stares out the window until the sky turns light. He finally falls into a fitful sleep an hour after the sun rises. Bucky’s alarm goes off an hour after that and Steve wakes up, stares at the ceiling, and tries not to feel the exhaustion settle deep into his bones.


	7. six. (team program)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> If you take away anything from this fic, I hope it’s that boys are dumb and they’re even dumber when falling in love. Honestly.

Steve swallows two cups of coffee and inhales a protein bar before changing into his practice clothes and trudging after Bucky to the arena. They avoid talking out the door, sit separately on the shuttle, and continue not talking the entire way there.

It doesn’t get any better during training.

Steve and Bucky haven’t been skating together for very long, but they’ve been skating long enough to realize early how a routine is going to go.

Today, it starts with a missed step.

Steve and Bucky have to prepare two pieces, a performance for the short program and one for the long program. The long program is more fluid, focuses on endurance and precision, rather than the difficult jumps or tricks of leaps and twirls. The short program is more robust, faster, livelier, more exciting.

The problem is that both require synchronicity, a degree of trust, and some chemistry.

Steve and Bucky are independently and collectively so wary of one another that they find themselves lacking all three.

Steve swings by Bucky and the two of them have a sequence of multiple steps requiring expert execution and very very careful timing. Their footwork is supposed to match step-for-step before Steve comes around and Bucky reaches for him, and they do a sit spin together.

They’ve practiced this a hundred times by now and they’re not perfect or even particularly wonderful, but they do well enough. But today, Steve is tired and Bucky is irate and the music is so _annoying_ , like a buzzing that won’t get out of his head. They begin sniping at each other before they even get out on the ice. Their synchronization is off, their skating heavy, their chemistry nonexistent.

They skate past each other, their spins coming loose, neither of them jump even close to the height required. Steve fumbles an easy toe loop and Fury gets so pissed at them that his eyepatch shakes. 

“ _Stop wasting my time!_ ” he shouts at them.

It’s after they’ve gotten chewed out for the second or third time for being lackluster and uncoordinated that they have to attempt the complicated sequence that matches footsteps and leads to the sit spin. Steve, tired and frustrated, doesn’t pay attention to his feet. Or maybe Bucky, frustrated and angry, doesn’t realize that he’s stepping faster than Steve.

Whatever happens, the two of them fall out of step at a speed that not even Fury can observe, Steve missing his step, Bucky stumbling over his skates, and when the two them collide into each other and fall onto the ice on their asses, they lose it.

“Are you _shitting_ me?” Steve growls, getting to his feet.

“Do you even watch where your feet are going, Rogers?” Bucky snaps simultaneously.

“Have you ever completed a fucking step in your _life_?” Steve asks. “Seriously. Do you know how feet _work_?”

He’s so angry he has a hard time focusing on anything other than how much he wants to slug Bucky on the spot.

“You want to tell Fury I missed that step?” Bucky says angrily, getting to his feet. “Because he still has one fucking eye, he isn’t _blind_.”

“Hey!” Fury barks. “Knock it off.”

“You _stumbled_ ,” Steve seethes and the ice sprays a little as he skates to a stop in front of Bucky. “Last time I saw a skater stumble was when we were breaking in our _first skates_.”

“ _You missed your step, you talentless waste of space_ ,” Bucky shouts.

“You’ve been off beat _all day_ ,” Steve says, his voice getting louder, matching Bucky’s tenor. “Get your _shit together_.”

“Are you _kidding_ me?” Bucky glares. He’s so angry his breathing is audible, his chest nearly heaving. “I’ve seen _toddlers_ skate better than you. You show your mother those pathetic moves?”

Steve takes in a sharp breath that he feels hit that place in his chest where everything turns to fire. He doesn’t even think before he snaps, his hands on the neck of Bucky’s costume.

“You keep my mother’s name out of your _fucking mouth_ ,” Steve hisses.

Bucky has his hands on Steve’s chest and then they’re slipping on their skates, tousling, and yelling louder and _louder_ , their shouts echoing off the walls.

“ _Enough!_ ” Fury roars, coming in between his two skaters and tearing them apart. “Rogers, go cool off! Barnes, take a lap!”

Steve is so livid, so absolutely seething with anger that he doesn’t move for a second. His hands shake as he clasps his fingers closed. If looks could kill, Bucky Barnes would fall dead on the spot.

“I can’t _stand_ you,” Steve growls at Bucky.

“You’re a _spineless piece of shit_ ,” Bucky growls back.

“If you two don’t fucking _get your shit together_ I’ll bench you, _don’t fucking think I won’t_.” Fury, hands still between the two of them, shoves them both.

Steve goes skating backwards. He imagines setting Bucky Barnes on fire.

Then he turns on his skates and stomps to the locker rooms. Or, the ice skating version of that.

 

It’s takes them a half an hour to calm down. When they return, Fury reads them the riot act, tells them in no uncertain terms that he will not hesitate to take them out of the competition if they continue fighting like uncivilized, spoiled brats.

“ _I will not have fighting on my squad. Do I make myself clear?_ ” he had barked at them and his one eye had been so deadly angry it felt like a live bomb wired to their skins.

The rest of the practice is more begrudgingly civilized after that, but it certainly doesn’t warm up any. They manage to get through both routines, matching the steps and landing the jumps, but it’s clear that their heart is somewhere else. It’s the most lackluster performance Steve’s ever put in and it sets his teeth on edge, makes his mouth taste foul.

Fury doesn’t tell them they do better, at the end, just dismisses them with disgust.

They leave the training arena separately, cold and distant as strangers.

**

The night is awkward and the morning even moreso. Their cold war is loud in how quiet it is, their movements around each other stilted, their touches frigid. Bucky leaves for the arena with Natasha and Steve’s left behind with Sam, whose first hockey game isn’t for another day.

“What happened?” Sam asks quietly.

They walk through the bustle of Olympic Village, on their way to catch the bus to the figure skating arena.

“I don’t want to talk about it,” Steve says shortly. He has his headphones around his neck, his phone in his pocket. The gym bag with his costume is slung across his shoulder. He’s all nervous energy, his head going through their routines, step-by-step.

“Okay,” Sam says. “Except.”

Steve is visualizing one of his double lutzes, but he pauses his jump mid-air to turn to Sam.

“Except?”

“You think you two are subtle?” Sam asks. “Come on Steve. You both have the subtlety and tact of two drunk hippopotamuses.”

“Hippos are actually really subtle in water,” Steve says, just to be a little shit. “That’s why they’re so dangerous.”

“Don’t be annoying,” Sam says. They get stopped behind a pair of tall Swedish skiers and wait in line for the bus. “Anyway, did I say you were in water? You’re drunk hippopotamuses in the middle of like, a strip mall.”

Steve sighs.

“I can’t--” he says and rubs a palm across his face. “He hates me, Sam.”

“You hate him,” Sam replies. “That’s not news?”

“I hate him in a general way,” Steve says. “The way you hate your rival, not the way you hate your enemy.”

“Seems like a fake distinction, but okay,” Sam says, raising an eyebrow.

“He blames me for Worlds,” Steve says quietly. “And he keeps saying--everything he says gets under my skin. Every single fucking thing.”

“So don’t let it,” Sam says. He sounds annoyed, which is unusual for Sam, so Steve looks at him curiously. “Listen, Steve. You and Barnes made some kind of deal with the devil himself to come here. If you’d asked me I would have told you it was a stupid fucking idea, but you didn’t ask me, you ran your mouth like usual, and now you’re here and he’s stuck with you.”

That causes a pang of slight guilt in Steve. But only a slight one.

“He doesn’t know what happened at Worlds,” Sam says. “He hates you because he doesn’t know. I’m not saying that makes it easier for you, but it’s the truth. You’d hate him too if the situation was reversed. But he’s here with you anyway and you know what? I see him trying. Are you?”

Steve shifts from one foot to the other, uncomfortable.

“Yes,” he says.

“Bullshit,” Sam says immediately and Steve winces. “I’ve seen you try harder to open a jar of pickles.”

“Those jars are hard to open,” Steve mutters and Sam levels him with such a pointed glare that he immediately concedes. “Okay, okay--you’re--”

Steve sighs again.

Sam steps up onto the bus and Steve follows him to the back.

It’s packed, all sorts of athletes on their way from the Village to the figure skating arena for tonight’s Team competition. There’s that energy in the air again, excitement with an undercurrent of pure adrenaline.

“I know you’re right,” Steve says, swallowing and sitting next to Sam. “I just don’t know if I’m ready yet. For anyone to know.”

That seems to soften Sam. Sam who’s been Steve’s best friend since they met at the ice rink during fifth grade. Steve has never been anything but a stubborn and tangled web of trouble. Sam has tolerated all of that. He’s never asked a single question or threatened to leave Steve for being stupid. He’s told Steve off before and he’s willing to tell Steve off now, except for in this one thing. Sam knows how to handle Steve’s wounded heart. It’s one of the things Steve loves about his best friend.

“That’s your call, Steve,” he says, gentler this time. “I get it. You know I do. And I’ll support you all the way. But you’re in a--relationship with Barnes. You dragged him into this. You can’t hang him out to dry. Some way or another, you two gotta work out your differences or this is never gonna work.”

It’s a bitter pill to swallow, but Steve knows that Sam is right. Sam is rarely not right.

Steve takes a shaky breath and nods.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll try to be better. I’ll try to hide all of my murderous thoughts about Bucky Barnes under how much I like how his hair flops or whatever.”

That makes Sam raise his eyebrows, high.

“What,” Steve says, coloring a little. “It flops a lot!”

“Yeah, okay,” Sam says. “Keep your murder to yourself. And if you two start having sex, use protection, and try not to be too loud.”

Steve flushes, spluttering immediately.

“Sam! What--you--he--”

He’s still wheezing as Sam, the absolute traitor, cracks the fuck up in the seat next to him. It’s such an outrageous, uncomfortable, terrible thought that Steve thinks about yelling at Sam. He also thinks about ignoring Sam indefinitely.

 

In the end he gets to do neither of these things because the bus pulls up to the figure skating arena and then all thoughts of Bucky Barnes leaves Steve’s head because the arena is lit up and little lights hover in front of the stadium, spelling out:

**FIGURE SKATING COMPETITION** **:** **TEAM PROGRAM**

“Fuck,” Steve breathes out loud.

“This is it, Rogers,” Sam says. “No turning back now.”

Steve gets off the bus with Sam, follows another group of Swedes and a Norwegian down the steps and closer to the mouth of the arena. The audience and the non-competing athletes are going through one entrance. The competing athletes are going through another.

There, near the mouth of the competition entrance, is a familiar head of floppy brown hair and a face Steve could punch.

Bucky spots Steve as he comes into view and from his place, yards away, slowly nods at him.

“Yeah,” Steve breathes out loud to himself, shakily. “No turning back now.”

 

“Here’s the schedule,” Coulson says, distributing paper copies of the different skating groups and what order they’ll be in. Today is the short program and tomorrow will be the longer, free skating program. “It’s going to be the ice dancers first, then pairs, then individual men, and individual women. Ice dancers, get warmed up and changed and meet me by the rink. The rest of you, start preparing. Nebula, try not to cut your sister with your skating blades again.”

Nebula shrugs and the four ice dancers make their way to the locker room.

Steve takes a breath and tries to catch Bucky’s eye. Bucky ignores him though, just puts his headphones in and heads to the studio. Frustrated, Steve runs a hand through his hair.

He puts his own earbuds in, turns Years & Years up loud, and goes to find the studio to warm up and shake off his nerves.

 

Being inside the studio while the competition starts is both a nerve wracking and calming experience. Steve can’t hear the audience while his music plays, but as he stretches, practices his plies, and holds poses to test his balance, he can feel the magnitude of the event. He’s grown up going from competition to competition, but it never seems real to him, that he can take this thing that he loves and perform it for thousands of people and not only will they watch and judge, but they’ll love as well. He thinks this is why he does it, not for the money or the fame, but because he loves this sport so much it takes up space in his heart that doesn’t leave room for much else. To be surrounded by people who love it too, even fleetingly, even for the moment, calms something in him that’s always just a little frayed.

Steve closes his eyes, holds his pose against the wall, one hand braced against it, his one leg stretched out behind him. He imagines himself on the ice, his movement smooth, his limbs stretched like a long line.

When he opens his eyes, he’s no longer alone.

Bucky’s watching him from near the doorway.

 

On a night like tonight, when everything is about to start, Bucky feels the weight of everything begin to press on him, a light panic that he can never quite shake. When he does his warm ups, he makes sure his edges are correct, his posture impeccable. He doesn’t allow himself to make mistakes because making mistakes backstage means making mistakes on the ice and making mistakes on the ice means--Bucky has a flashback to Nagoya and his stomach tightens, his head threatening to careen into a space he’s suppressed for two years.

It’s not enough to shake off Nagoya, for him. He has a devotion to perfectionism that’s difficult to explain to anyone who thinks this is just a sport or something he should love, but shake off when it hurts him. It’s not that simple for him. Skating is the reason Bucky is still here, the lifeline thrown to him when his brain chemicals had dipped so low he had seen only one way out of the narrow tunnel. He swallows his anxiety and depression when he’s on the ice, channels it to something close to religious fervor. Not a desire to be perfect, so much as a need. He’s always on the precipice, Bucky.

It’s different for other people.

Bucky walks into the studio and sees Steve, with his eyes closed, the lines of his body relaxed. He feels an undeserved pang of envy. Steve always looks as though he doesn’t have a care in the world, as though he could take skating or leave it and it wouldn’t make any kind of difference to him. Bucky doesn’t understand that mentality, can’t imagine it in someone who he’s been vying with for first place since they were kids. It’s so easy for Steve, to be here, and so easy for Steve, to leave it, minutes before the competition starts, like it means nothing at all.

Steve opens his eyes and catches Bucky watching.

Still, he had tried, after the opening ceremony. He had offered an olive branch that Steve didn’t deserve, willing to build a bridge, ignore everything between them and everything Steve had done, to try to care, for the sake of their lie and their performance.

Steve had made it clear that he didn’t give a shit.

Bucky feels the resentment swoop through his stomach, hot and familiar. He swallows his ire and moves toward the other wall.

He’s doing his own warm ups when Steve tries to talk to him.

“Bucky,” he says, like nothing happened.

Bucky shakes his head.

Whatever this is, whatever it is they’re doing, they don’t need to be anything more than partners on ice. Bucky doesn’t need to know about Steve and Steve doesn’t need to apologize to Bucky for being a dick to him. All they need to do is be good when it counts.

“Let’s just get through this,” Bucky grits out. “Do what we practiced--no, do it better. Three weeks and we never have to talk to each other again.”

Steve opens his mouth, looks like he’s surprised or stricken or just has something to say, which he probably does, because he always has something fucking to say.

“Listen--” Steve starts, but Bucky cuts him off again.

“You don’t get it, do you?” Bucky tries to sound as harsh as possible. “We’re not friends. We’re nothing, we don’t owe each other _anything_. We’re caught in a lie together and that’s it. We don’t have to do anything but make sure everyone believes us. So just...do that and leave me alone, Steve.”

Steve controls his facial expression remarkably well for someone who has no poker face. His mouth is a little tight at the corners and his eyes just a little sad, but he gives no other indication one way or another that he cares about what Bucky said. Instead, he just gives Bucky a small nod.

“Okay,” he says. “I’ll leave you alone, Bucky.”

Steve puts his headphones back in and retreats.

Bucky feels worse for it, but also better, like he’s accomplished something he’s been trying to for a very long time. He watches Steve for another minute before turning back to the wall and driving everything out of his head except their short program.

 

“Bucky,” one of the non-American skaters, a woman with dark curls, smiles at him. “You are doing pairs skating?”

Bucky has always been good at faking emotions, making things seem easy when they’re not. He gives her a charming smile.

“Yeah,” he says. “It’s a change and a challenge, but--I think it’ll be good. Hopefully we don’t drop each other.”

“Oh you will not do that,” the woman says with a laugh. “You are together? You and Steve Rogers?”

Bucky’s smile remains in place, miraculously.

“Yeah,” he says. “I’m lucky to skate with him.”

The woman sighs.

“You are so talented,” she says. “Separately. I have always been fan. Now I will be fan of both.”

“Thanks,” Bucky says. “Good luck to you.”

The woman beams at him warmly, tells him again how much she’s looking forward to finally seeing him and Steve together, and lets him find his way out to the rink.

He doesn’t have the heart to tell her that there’s nothing to look forward to. He feels it in his chest, that this is all wrong.

He knows it’s going to be a disaster.

 

“No fighting,” is what Fury tells the two of them at the boards.

They watch the pair before them--a Sokovian brother and sister pair who are seamless, hand-in-hand, not missing a step or a jump--and nervously gather their breaths.

“Get through this,” Fury grits out. “And I’ll consider not telling everyone your entire story is bullshit.”

Steve and Bucky exchange a slightly panicked look.

“Like he said,” Fury says, jabbing a thumb at Bucky. “I got one eye. I’m not goddamned blind. Don’t make me regret this.”

The Sokovians end their turn, skate off to resounding applause and a barrage of flowers.

Then it’s their turn.

Steve opens the gate to skate onto the ice first and Bucky follows him.

For just a moment, Steve considers saying something to him, trying to mend this broken thing between them, for the sake of the skate. His head is spinning from the crowd, from the adrenaline of the performance, from the weight of an entire nation’s expectations on his shoulders. He could use a friend.

But Bucky skates past him wordlessly and Steve remembers what he said before.

 _Just leave me alone, Steve_.

And Steve had said he would.

So he doesn’t say anything at all before taking his position next to Bucky.

It’s a mistake.

That much is apparent almost immediately.

 

There are few performances Steve can say, with confidence, from the second the music starts, he knows is going to go poorly. When he’s on the ice, his mind is usually blank, his body moving with the music, the choreography natural and memorized, every line of his body fluid for this one and only purpose.

It all feels off from the very beginning.

He feels inside his head and out, his body heavy and out of tune. He’s restless and distracted.

They’re supposed to be a pair, two individuals coming together in one seamless performance, but they feel worlds away from each other. Steve looks at Bucky and Bucky won’t catch his eyes.

It’s unnerving. When he skates by himself, Steve has to depend on himself and himself alone. The loneliness is a part of the performance, the entire world balanced on the sliver of his blades and nothing else. The realization dawns on him just before they start. Steve has their performance memorized, but he doesn’t know what Bucky is going to do or when or where. He doesn’t know what to expect.

He doesn’t fucking trust him.

And off the ice, in the locker room, in their hotel room, that doesn’t fucking matter.

But here, on the ice, it’s the only thing that does.

So the music begins and Steve turns and Bucky’s still looking at his skates and he knows, without a doubt, from that first second, that it’s all going to go very, very wrong.

 

Bucky has one memory--a single one--of a performance so poor, of a routine so distinctly off the mark, that he can tell he won’t ever recover from it. The fear of failure holds high and tight in his chest.

At first it seems like they might be okay. They’re both two good, professional skaters, the best in their category by far. Even if they don’t always connect or have the chemistry of Stark and Rhodey or of the Maximoff twins, they have the individual skills to overcome whatever might be lacking between them.

And it might have even been all right, if they could have had a moment, just one moment, where they connected. Where Bucky could look Steve in the eyes and not remember how much Steve hates him. Where Steve could spin and trust that Bucky would be watching.

But they don’t have that moment. They don’t have any moments.

 

It’s not career ending, but it’s confidence shattering. They miss connections, their steps out of sync, their spins loose when they should be tight. Steve jumps once and Bucky catches him, but he lets go too fast and any cohesion in the movement falls apart.

Then Bucky jumps and Steve jumps with him and their spins are off, Steve’s jump too low, Bucky landing seconds before Steve does.

They do one pass around the rink and it’s fine, they’re moving together.

Then they come back together and try to do a camel spin and it’s so awkward that Bucky can hear Steve’s growl of frustration over the music.

They don’t fall, but they stumble, a few times.

There’s no chemistry, but worse of all, there’s no passion to it. They feel detached, from the routine and from each other. The air seems to deflate in the room, around them, between them, and Bucky can’t hear the commentators, but he can imagine them.

_This was a risk, and it seems it did not pay off. Barnes and Rogers are better off apart._

It’s the worst Bucky’s ever performed and his anxiety is so high, has ratcheted to levels that make mistakes easy, that make it simple to reach for Steve and to miss by an inch.

Steve tries his best, Bucky can see it in his face, and Bucky does too, but it’s almost too little, too late.

It’s a crushing relief when it all winds down and that’s the worst sign of all, that Bucky can think about it concretely, that he’s having thoughts and not simply moving with the music.

Steve spins into Bucky’s arms and Bucky holds them, the two of them bracing against the ice, skating the perimeter. Bucky can feel Steve’s chest heaving and it all comes crashing into him there, in the middle of their wretched performance, how they’ve both fucked this up.

They go low into parallel spins and finish the performance with one foot behind them, their arms up above their heads. It’s without any finesse or passion. It feels rotten, not a performance, but a failure.

Steve’s head dips low and Bucky feels a burning at the back of his throat.

It’s bad. It’s all so, very bad.

“I’m sorry,” Bucky manages to whisper, his body tired, his own breathing heavy.

If Steve hears him, he doesn’t say anything. He just skates past him fast, as though he can’t get away from him, and the rink, fast enough.

 

Fury doesn’t say anything and that’s about the only miracle they have.

Steve barely waits around for their abysmal scores at the kiss and tell before he shoves past everyone into the locker room. He locks himself into one of the changing stalls and squats, covers his face with his hands, and screams.


	8. seven. (after)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> It's time.

The worst part, Bucky will think later, is that he can’t even hate Steve for letting the team down at Worlds anymore. Because no one performs perfect results that night, but they perform the worst by far. Their short program score leaves the team total so low that not even Tony and Rhodey’s rather gorgeous free skate can bring the collective score back up.

The U.S. national team finishes fourth, just beyond medal contention, and Bucky would die if he could. He waits for the final team scores to be announced before putting on a fake smile, throwing his training jacket on over his costume, and shoving his way to the locker room.

The feeling of failure is so acute it ripples through his body, his muscles tight, his head aching. He takes his skates off and puts his sneakers on, his hands shaking. Bucky’s so close to a panic attack that he doesn’t notice someone come stand next to him.

It takes him a moment to process what Coulson says.

“What?” Bucky looks up at the assistant coach, blinking slowly.

“The interview,” he says. “I can’t find Steve, do you know where he is? I’ll walk you both to the studio.”

Bucky must look as slow as he feels, because Coulson pauses and, rather more kindly than Bucky probably deserves, repeats himself.

“The NBC interview,” he says. “It’s you and Steve tonight. It was on the schedule I sent you.”

Bucky, who’s ready to go back to Olympic Village and drown his humiliation at the bottom of a bottle of vodka he’s definitely going to regret tomorrow, feels bile rise in his throat. It’s a horrible accompaniment to the simmering panic.

“The interview,” he says hoarsely.

“I know it’s been a rough night for you both, but you’re the ones scheduled,” Coulson says. He looks both sympathetic and no nonsense. Bucky can tell from the lines of Coulson’s mouth that he’s not going to get out of this. “Where’s Steve?”

“I--” Bucky says, opens his mouth and swallows. He feels lightheaded from all of his feelings. “I don’t know.”

Coulson pauses and Bucky knows immediately it’s not a good one. Fury will hear about this later, if not immediately.

“I’ll find him,” Bucky swallows.

“You have to be there in ten minutes,” Coulson says. “Make it fast.”  
  
  
Bucky has no idea where Steve is or where he could possibly be. At first he thinks Steve’s left the arena entirely, headed back to Olympic Village to take his anger out on a bottle of alcohol or some poor, unsuspecting foreign athlete.

Then he runs into Natasha, who digs her nails into his arm.

“You’re panicking,” she says. “Stop that.”

“A little late for that, Nat,” Bucky says through gritted teeth and breaths he’s trying to take.

“If you show up like that on camera, they’ll tear you apart,” Natasha says. “Take a breath. Where did you go after your fall in Nagoya?”

“Why would that matter?” Bucky asks.

“You’re a fool,” Natasha says, almost coldly. “You and Steve are the same person. If you haven’t figured that out by now, you’re a bigger idiot than I thought you were.”

Bucky opens his mouth to protest, but Natasha simply digs her nails in more. Bucky winces.

“Go where you went then and you’ll find him there.”

  
Bucky is dubious about Nat’s advice, but he doesn’t have many choices left to him. He hates thinking back to Nagoya, about how it had wrecked him, emotionally and almost physically. Nagoya had been the first time he had failed on that grand of a scale. Bucky remembers very little of that night but, somehow, everything too, all of his fears of failure and mediocrity manifesting in one terrible, awful fall.

He hadn’t wanted to stay for the kiss and tell, but Fury had made him.

When he had managed to tear away from terrible, pseudo-well-meaning reporters, he had wanted to get on a plane and leave the country, immediately. It hadn’t been possible. He had to wait for the rest of the team, so he went to the only place he knew he could berate himself in peace.

Bucky knows the second he steps into the studio that Natasha was right.

Steve’s the only one here now, but he’s practicing plies against the mirror. His face is red from exertion, his hair messed up. He looks like he’s exhausted and in pain, but he can’t stop, or won’t.

Bucky remembers that feeling.

After he had fallen, he wanted nothing more than to punish himself. It would have been easy to lose himself in some self-destructive habit, but he had been too disciplined for that. The consummate figure skating professional.

So he had done the next best thing.

He had continued training his exhausted, weary body, working it past the point of safety, until he had nearly collapsed from pain, his body unable to take much more of it.

Steve is an athlete too, lean and strong in his own way, but he’s small. Bucky, who’s known him nearly his entire life, knows about the past asthma, all of the hospitalizations, the bad cases of pneumonia he would get when he was younger. Steve is a lot stronger and better than he used to be, but Bucky remembers watching him closely during competitions when they were younger, afraid he would hurt himself and never come back.

He swallows the complicated feelings away and steps inside.

Steve either doesn’t notice him or doesn’t care. He continues to do plies and Bucky can nearly see his legs try to buckle under him.

“Steve,” Bucky says softly.

Steve ignore him.

He continues his repetitions, once up, once down.

“Steve,” Bucky says again, louder, and steps in.

Again, once up, once down.

“Stop,” Bucky says.

Once down, once up. Something seems to catch in Steve’s throat, because for a moment he holds the glass and seems to sway.

Steve tries to ignore it. That stubborn, absolute, horrible _idiot_ tries to do it one more time.

Bucky crosses the studio just as Steve’s knees do buckle.

Steve gasps as he knocks into the mirror and then Bucky’s there, arm around his back, catching him before he collapses to the ground.

“ _Fuck_ ,” Bucky says, inhaling a little as Steve gasps and scrabbles to hold onto him. “Steve, you fucking _idiot_.”

“Leave me alone, Bucky,” Steve says.

Or, Steve tries to say.

It takes Bucky almost two full breaths to realize that Steve’s voice comes out breathy and watery. It’s not the bold, angry, arrogant Steve he knows and is used to.

It’s someone else entirely, someone Bucky can relate to.

Something in Bucky’s chest constricts. Steve tries to pull himself away, but he’s too exhausted, his legs like jelly.

“Come on,” Bucky says quietly. “Let’s sit.”

Steve tries to protest, but Bucky presses his fingers into Steve’s upper arm, hard, and it’s like all of the fight drains out of him. They both sink to the ground, side by side.

“Fuck,” Steve says. He pulls his knees up and covers his face with his hands. “ _Fuck_.”

Bucky doesn’t say anything, just pulls his knees up as well.

He knows what it’s like, to be so overwhelmed and hurt by your own failure that there’s nothing to do except to cry. He’s done it before, alone, in a studio in Nagoya. There hadn’t been anyone there for him that time; he had been left to nothing but his own thoughts and horrible, self-destructive feelings. He had survived, but it had been miserable, through sheer force of will.

What he had wanted and needed, Bucky had realized so much later, was someone to be there with him. A friend. Someone he cared about, or trusted. Just someone to hold him and tell him everything sucked, but that it was going to be okay, even if it didn’t feel like it.

He wants to say something to Steve, anything to make him feel better. He knows Steve hates him and he even hates Steve, sometimes, but this he knows he wants, in the moment, desperately--to comfort him, somehow, and make his shoulders stop shaking.

Bucky takes a breath, almost touches Steve, and then keeps his hands to himself.

“We…really sucked,” he says, finally.

He doesn’t know if Steve heard him, because he doesn’t say anything.

“I guess we deserved it, in a way,” Bucky says. This time he knows Steve hears him, because he feels him stiffen beside him. “I’m not any happier about it than you are, but. I guess, maybe, we’ve both been acting like…”

Bucky waits a moment, leaves it unsaid.

Then he hears a muffled noise.

“What?” he asks.

Another muffled noise.

“I’m not a bat, Steve,” he says.

Finally, Steve sighs and raises his head.

“Jackasses,” he says. His voice is still tight and watery. “We’ve both been acting like jackasses.”

Bucky turns to look at him, to reply, and he’s surprised to see how wet Steve’s face is. His eyes are red, clear tear tracks down his cheeks. He’s trying hard not to sniffle, as though that’s the only thing that would make it obvious.

It’s like looking into a mirror.

“Steve,” he says and Steve shakes his head.

“Don’t,” he says. “I don’t need your pity.”

“Jesus,” Bucky mutters. Steve looks at his knees and Bucky says, louder, “Steve, I’m not pitying you. What would I pity you for?”

“I fucked it all up,” Steve says. He sounds shaky again. “I fucked up our entire routine.”

It would be a lie to say that Bucky wasn’t surprised to hear that. In all of the commentary running through his own miserable, hurt, disappointed head, he had never once assumed that Steve was going to try to take the blame for everything.

“What are you talking about?” Bucky asks, staring at him.

“I should have been better,” Steve says, hard. “My jumps were off. I was shaky. I couldn’t get out of my own head. I messed up our entire rhythm.”

Bucky just--Jesus, he fucking stares.

“Steve…” he says slowly. “Steve, what rhythm?”

Steve, eyes shining again, looks at Bucky this time.

“What?”

“Oh my god,” Bucky says. “Steve, we didn’t have a rhythm. Are you crazy? Are you--Jesus fucking Christ, have you ever worked on a team for _anything_?”

Bucky--God, he hates it. He hates the way that Steve looks both angry and stricken. It makes him looks smaller than he usually looks, which is devastating because Steve Rogers, for being as physically short as he is, has never looked small a day in his life.

“You can’t take the blame for this,” Bucky says and now his voice is hard. “You can’t try to take this all on your fucking shoulders.”

Steve stares at his hands and--fuck. It makes Bucky mad. It makes him so suddenly fucking _mad_.

“You’re--there are _two_ of us, Rogers,” Bucky says. “This isn’t individual competition. You and I aren’t rivals, not at these Olympics, not in these events. We’re supposed to be a _pair_ and when both people in the _pair_ don’t work together, they fail together. You didn’t mess up our rhythm, you idiot. We didn’t have a rhythm. You and I never established one. We didn’t establish _anything_.”

Steve swallows. He looks for a second like he might collapse into himself and then he rubs his palms against his eyes.

“I thought you wanted to blame me,” Steve says. “Isn’t that what you do? Blame me for everything?”

“Hey, fuck _you_ ,” Bucky says heatedly. “I’m trying to--God, I’m trying to fix this thing and you’re just being an ass. You know what? Forget it--”

Bucky moves to get up, but Steve’s hand darts out, his fingers close on Bucky’s wrist.

Bucky, so angry he’s about to combust with it, looks at the hand on his wrist and looks at Steve.

“I’m sorry,” Steve says, looking back at him. He looks like he’s about to panic. “Bucky, stop. I’m sorry. I didn’t mean it that way.”

Bucky’s of the mind to say _fuck you_ anyway, but he knows that look in Steve’s eyes. It’s a fear he carries around with him every single day.

Steve only lets go when Bucky settles back down.

They don’t say anything again for a minute, both of them looking at their feet. Bucky can feel the wave of misery rolling off of Steve. It’s not unlike the one hanging thick around him.

“We fucked up,” Steve says. It’s an admission. It doesn’t make Bucky feel better, but. It makes him feel a little better. “We both fucked up.”

Bucky curls his fingers into the fabric of his track pants.

“Yeah,” he says. “We did.”

“How do we fix this, Buck?” Steve asks.

For a moment, Bucky can’t answer.

He trains his eyes on his knees, flexes his fingers tight and loose around the fabric.

It’s so stupid.

He’s so fucking stupid.

He remembers every single time that Steve has called him Buck because he’s memorized almost every single thing Steve has ever said to him. Steve only ever calls him Buck when he’s really really upset or he’s really really happy. Either way, he forgets, for just a minute, that he hates Bucky as much as he does, and he calls him Buck and no matter how old Bucky’s been, or how much they’ve been at each other’s throats, it’s always curled tightly in his chest.

“Maybe we start by--working together,” Bucky says with a swallow.

Steve nods.

“We’ve been individuals skaters our entire lives,” Bucky continues. He looks at the space ahead of them. “Maybe we start acting like we’re a pairs team now. Like we’re...a pair.”

Steve is so still Bucky’s afraid he’s said something wrong. But then he nods.

“Okay,” he says.

They fall silent again, sitting there on the ground, side-by-side. Bucky knows that they need to catch this bus, that they’re probably already late for NBC. But he can’t bring himself to break this, this one moment of tenuous peace in an absolute clusterfuck of hurt.

“Buck?” Steve finally says, after a few minutes of nothing but breathing.

“Yeah?” Bucky looks at him.

Steve’s still looking at his knees. His blond hair has fallen loose, into his eyes. Bucky can’t see them, but he knows what they look like, bright blue and full, like he can’t possibly contain every single thing he’s feeling, but he does, contain a multitude of everything.

Even like this, even falling apart as he is, Bucky has Steve memorized. He has always, his entire life, thought Steve Rogers was so, desperately beautiful.

It aches in his chest, the place where he can hate and not hate this person at the same time.

“I’m sorry,” Steve whispers.

“I already said--” Bucky starts, but Steve shakes his head.

“Not that,” he says.

“Then?” Bucky asks.

It takes another minute, but Steve opens his palms on his knees. Then, slowly, he looks at Bucky. The hurt on his face is unlike anything Bucky’s ever seen before. He’s never known Steve to look this raw and it startles him, makes him think something life-ending has happened.

“For Worlds,” he says. “I--I’m sorry I left without saying anything. I’m sorry I let the team down. I’m sorry I betrayed you.”

Bucky--he doesn’t know why, but his vision suddenly blurs too.

For so long, he’s held onto this, that moment of betrayal. For years he had looked to Steve as his rival, but as his partner in a way. They hated each other, but they didn’t, as well. Steve and Bucky were to each other as air and fire were together, one needing the other to survive and be better. Bucky thinks, if he stops to think about it for longer than a few bitter, furious few seconds, Steve’s leaving at Worlds hadn’t been about the team, but it had, in some way, been about him. Been about them.

Steve had left them at Worlds and then he had left the sport, for two whole years. He and Bucky had never been friends, but they could have been.

After everything, after all of those years together, Steve hadn’t said a word to him.

He had just left and Bucky had never known why.

Who was Bucky Barnes on ice without Steve Rogers?

He supposes he’s still not entirely sure.

Bucky swallows now, the hurt and anger fresh, bubbling to the top of his chest.

“Okay,” he says quietly.

“I understand if you can never forgive me,” Steve says. “I really do. But I--if we want to do this. If we want to be better than we were tonight, then I think we have to be honest with each other.”

Bucky swallows past a thick lump in his throat.

“Okay,” he says.

“Can I explain why I left that day?” Steve asks softly.

Bucky pauses, a little dizzy.

“Are you ready to tell me?”

“Not really,” Steve says and Bucky’s heart sinks. “But it’s not personal. Or, I guess it’s too personal. It’s not something I’m ever ready to talk about.”

For the first time since that fateful day in competition, it dawns on Bucky, with a slow, horrifying, creeping dread, that maybe something happened. That maybe Steve hadn’t just stormed off in a selfish huff, but that maybe he had a reason and the reason was bad.

What was it that Natasha had said?

_Whatever Steve did or had to do, that’s his problem. We don’t know his story, maybe he didn’t have a choice._

Bucky’s two years too late in thinking, maybe Steve Rogers is a human too.

“Steve, wait--” Bucky says, panicking, but Steve shakes his head.

“Bucky,” Steve says and presses his palms to his eyes. He presses as hard as it seems he can. “I left Worlds that day because I got a call. Just before I was supposed to go on ice.”

“Steve,” Bucky almost begs. “You don’t have to explain yourself, it’s not my business, I’m sorr--”

“No,” Steve says. “I don’t want you to hate me for this anymore.”

“I don’t hate you--” Bucky tries and even though he knows, in his fucking soul, that it’s the truth, he knows it’s not believable.

So Steve shakes his head and when he removes his palm from his eyes, Bucky feels his own heart plummet to see Steve crying again.

“If I don’t say it now, I might never be able to again,” Steve says, so quietly that Bucky can barely hear.

Bucky wants to reach out, touch Steve, comfort him in some way, because whatever he’s going to admit—it’s bad. Bucky _knows_ that now.

It takes Steve another minute.

“The doctor called me, Buck,” he says. “Just before I was supposed to go on. Saying my Ma was gonna die. She was hours from it. And then she did.”

As long as Bucky Barnes lives, he will never, ever forgive himself, he thinks--for being such a dick, for not trusting Steve, for not letting things go and minding his own fucking, goddamned business. He will never forgive himself for making Steve confess this, for making him relive his own trauma and for what? A _stupid_ sports rivalry.

“I—thought I could come back, after. Bury my mother and take a few months off and come back to the ice, but I _couldn’t_ ,” Steve says. His voice is quiet, so very quiet, and shaking. “Every time I tried—I couldn’t. I look for her on the sides and she was never there. I couldn’t stand it. I couldn’t _face_ it. And then a few months turned into a few years.”

He’ll never forgive himself for making Steve look this way, like he’s small, _actually_ small.

“Steve,” Bucky croaks, his throat constricted so tightly he can barely get the words out. “I’m sorry. I’m so, so sorry.”

And he was. God, he really, really was.

“I don’t know if I can do this, Bucky,” Steve says thickly. “I don’t know if I can do it without her here.”

Bucky is going to go out of his mind with grief, for this person he’s known his entire life and not understood, at all, until just now.

“You can do it, Steve,” Bucky whispers. “We can do it together. I promise. You can count on me.”

And then, because he doesn’t know what else to do, what could possibly fix this, Bucky wraps his arms around Steve and pulls him close.

  
Coulson, who’s standing at the door, watches Bucky get to his knees, crawl to Steve, and wrap his arms around him.

He’s never seen Steve Rogers break down before, not even that day, during Worlds when he had gotten the call. It was Coulson who had received it. Steve had been about to go out onto the ice, two skaters away from his own performance.

Steve had told him and Fury the day before that his mother was back in the hospital and that the doctors had told him she was stable, but they would need to watch her overnight. Steve had been stressed and withdrawn the entire day, but he hadn’t wanted to let the team down. Fury and Coulson had insisted he go home, but he had gritted his teeth and been very Steve Rogers about it.

The doctors had called Steve’s traveling emergency contact, which was Coulson, on behalf of Fury, when they couldn’t reach him on his phone.

Coulson remembers the day like it was just yesterday. It had been one of the most heartbreaking days in his professional career.

He and Fury had respected Steve’s wishes to keep his secret, even though they all knew it would hurt Steve and work against him. But it was Steve’s desire to keep his mother’s final hours and her passing private and that, if nothing else, he and Fury could give to him.

He steps away from the studio and takes his phone out of his pocket.

“Coach,” he says, calling Fury. “Have Stark and Rhodes take the interview. I think everything’s about to change."


	9. eight. (before the short program)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Congratulations, readers. You've earned this chapter.
> 
> TW: Mentions of depression and anxiety.

When Steve wakes up the next morning, he feels a bit like an anvil fell on his head. He can’t remember the last time he drank this much and he wonders, briefly, what reason he had to do it at all.

Then he rolls over and sees long brown eyelashes and a head of beautiful, brown hair framing a handsome face and something sparks in his stomach, just before memory takes over.

Oh, he hadn’t drank at all.

He had just held onto his arch-rival and fake boyfriend and fallen apart.

**

Bucky hadn’t wanted them to stay in the arena for too long. There were too many reporters, too much bad karma from their performance.

“Let’s go back to the room,” he had suggested and Steve had been so spent, so grief-stricken that he had just nodded, let Bucky pull him up and put his jacket over him and lead them both out, hand-in-hand, Bucky leading and Steve in autopilot.

Bucky had said they should walk, because it was nice out and Steve needed some time to collect himself.

“I remember her,” Bucky said quietly, after five minutes of walking in silence. “At our competitions. She was always waiting for you at the sides.”

Steve laughed, wetly, and hiccuped.

“I remember thinking how could someone so beautiful make such a complete monster,” Bucky smiled and nudged Steve’s side.

Steve, despite himself, had laughed again.

“She liked you,” Steve said quietly, once he could catch his breath. “Always wondered why we weren’t friends.”

“Really?” Bucky smiled, surprised.

“Yeah, she liked how hard you worked. Said you had the best revolutions of all of us.”

“Oh,” Bucky said. He looked pleased. Then he nudged Steve’s shoulder again. “My Ma liked you too.”

“Really?” Steve looked at him this time.

“Yeah!” Bucky grinned. _“That little Steve Rogers is so talented! Why don’t you go talk to him, James?_ ”

Steve laughed and wiped some tears away from his blurry eyes.

“Sounds like our Ma’s were tryna set us up,” he said.

“Oh my mother would be _thrilled_ ,” Bucky muttered. “I mean she probably is, with the—”

He gestured between them and Steve nodded.

“She thinks someone would...help,” Bucky said. His expression grew a little darker.

“With what?”

Bucky didn’t say anything for a little while, just kicked the ground and looked ahead of them.

“I—struggle,” Bucky finally admitted. “With depression. And anxiety. Some OCD tendencies. I need...everything to be perfect or I go out of my mind.”

He gave Steve a rueful smile.

“So to speak.”

Steve, so miserable and in his own head, had paused, startled. Of all of the years he had known Bucky, he hadn’t known _this._ Bucky Barnes had always been so at ease everywhere, a beloved, handsome social butterfly. Steve had never seen someone so comfortable in his own skin.

Steve had envied that his entire life.

“Buck—I didn’t know.”

“I don’t go around advertising it,” Bucky said. He looked at his palms. “I always feel like a failure, for not being able to control it. It’s gotten better, I take medication, I go to therapy. My parents are as supportive as anyone can be. But I still have days where I just can’t get out of bed.”

Steve, who had been sick so much of his life, had had bouts of depression and that lingering anxiety, but never anything clinically diagnosable. His mom had though. She had inherited her Irish complexion from her mom and her anxiety disorder from her dad.

“Skating is the only thing that helps,” Bucky went on. “It...centers me. Gives me a reason to get out of bed when all I want is to—well, anyway.”

“This must be hard for you, then,” Steve said quietly. “Skating, but—failing.”

“I’ve held it together very, very carefully,” Bucky admitted.

“I’ve—” Steve stopped, because it was dawning on him now, in increments, why Bucky had been so angry with him, all these years, why him leaving the competition and sport had been such a betrayal. To Steve, skating was something loved, something cherished and inherited. It was a home for him, and he would never do anything else, but it wasn’t a reason to live. He could get out of bed and do anything else, if he wanted. For Bucky it was so much more than that, it was a reason to continue surviving.

It must have been horrifying to him, to see Steve throw all of that away, with no explanation.

“I’ve made everything so hard for you, Buck,” Steve said. He held still and Bucky stopped next to him, facing him. “Without your consent. You need things to be a certain way and I just...wrecked all of that. Bulldozed through. I’m so fucking sorry, I’ve been a terrible person to you.”

“Steve,” Bucky said and his voice was so urgent, Steve had looked up. Before he knew it, Bucky’s hands were on his face, cool and smooth. “I don’t think you get it. All those years my Ma wanted me to be your friend? That’s _exactly_ why. I live in my head and it’s full of stormy clouds and paranoia in there. I’m scared of doing anything I know I can’t do perfectly. I was a _wreck_ after Nagoya. I considered walking away from the sport altogether. But I knew I wouldn’t survive without it and I hated you so much besides, I had to keep existing just to shut your smug face up.”

Steve looked into Bucky’s eyes, illuminated under the moonlight, and didn’t understand, but didn’t want to stop him either.

“I need someone to bulldoze me is what I’m trying to say,” Bucky laughed. “In a way, your reckless, compulsive ass is perfect for me.”

Bucky hadn’t meant it in any other way than friendship, of course. Partnership, even.

But under the Wakanda moon, with Bucky’s hands on his face, his warmth radiating so very close, Steve’s heart had lurched, ever so slightly, like what Bucky was offering and what Steve’s heart actually wanted were two different things.

**

In the bright, morning light, Steve’s not sure what all he remembers after the horrible, miserable performance and the U.S. National Team’s subsequent fall, but there are a few things that remain terribly, horrifyingly clear. He remembers finally telling Bucky about Worlds. He remembers falling apart right there, on the floor of the studio, face pressed to Bucky’s shoulder, Bucky’s arms around him. He remembers Bucky whispering to him, telling him he was sorry and that it was going to be okay, over and over again. He remembers Bucky pressing kisses to his head, running a hand down his back. 

He remembers looking at Bucky, under the light of the moon, and feeling something shift in his stomach, an indefinable, terrifying thing, a little bit of fear and a lot more something else.

Steve has been so very alone, almost his whole life, but especially since his mother’s death, that he had forgotten what it feels like, to have somewhere there for him, to actually let himself be taken care of. He doesn’t know why he had let Bucky, only that he was there and he had looked at him with a kind of concern and kindness he had never looked at him with before and they had just shared this terrible experience and Bucky had told him something he had held so close to his chest and Steve was tired, so very tired of being hated for something that had torn his entire life apart. He was tired of being alone.

So he had told Bucky and he had held onto him and he remembers crying, with embarrassment.

“You must miss her,” Bucky had said, sometime on their walk, with Steve pressed close to him and the silence delicate between them.

“I can’t breathe,” Steve had replied and he had felt it, the raw vulnerability in his chest. “I miss her so much I forget to catch my breath sometimes.”

They had somehow made it back to their room and Steve doesn’t remember much after that, but he does remember, at some point, telling Bucky he didn’t want to be alone.

“I know this might be too much to ask,” Steve remembers saying quietly, under the cover of dark, after they finally made it back to their room. “But would you stay with me?”  
  
And Bucky, being Bucky, hadn’t even said anything.

He had just changed into his pajamas and crawled into Steve’s bed and Steve had held onto him, face pressed to his shoulder again, and Steve remembers that in the grief-stricken, heart-rending moment, it had seemed normal, perfect even. But now, with the light of the new day and Steve’s stress and grief subsided some, he’s absolutely mortified that he allowed himself to beg Bucky to stay.

Bucky looks so sweet and peaceful in his sleep and Steve wants so desperately to stop existing, that he can’t bring himself to wake the other man up. Instead, Steve slips out of bed, finds his slippers and robes, and goes to shower his embarrassment and the confused cocktail of his feelings away.  
  
  
By the time he gets back out, showered and calmer, Bucky’s also woken up. He’s sitting up in Steve’s bed, hair all rumpled, all soft and sleepy and Steve is absolutely horrified to find that it’s the most charming sight he’s ever seen.

For a moment, Steve thinks it’s going to be terrible and awkward. He takes a breath, braces himself to say something like, please forget last night ever happened I don’t know what got into me but if we could never mention it again I will name my firstborn after you.

But, instead, Bucky looks at him and gives him a soft smile that punches the breath out of Steve.

“Hey,” Bucky says. “How are you feeling?”

“Embarrassed,” Steve answers honestly. “Listen, Bucky, I’m so--”

“Steve, I swear to God if you apologize for last night, I’m going to throw my--” Bucky yawns at this point. His eyes scrunch up, his mouth gets wide. It’s so cute Steve feels physically and emotionally uncomfortable. “--skates at you. Once I can stop yawning.” 

“Did you not sleep well?” Steve asks, changing tactics. “I don’t know what I’m like to sleep next to, I haven’t shared my bed in a while--”

The words are out of Steve’s mouth before he has a chance to take them back, but once they are, his entire being comes grinding to a horrified halt. He knows he turns bright red because he can feel his skin burning.

“Oh, God,” he groans and Bucky throws his head back and laughs.

“It’s fine,” Bucky says, after he’s caught his breath. He grins. “In full disclosure, it’s been a while since I’ve shared my bed too. It wasn’t the worst experience.”

“Ugh,” Steve complains. “We’re not in front of the cameras, you don’t have to lay it on so thick.”

Bucky, the absolute outrage of a human, has the audacity to wink.

“You wanted a fake boyfriend and you got one.”

“I’ve never regretted something more in my life,” Steve mutters while rubbing his warm face. That just makes Bucky grin wider.

“While you were showering, Sam invited us to watch the men’s hockey match today. It’s their second game I think?” Bucky says. He scratches the back of his neck. “If you’re feeling up for it, I don’t think it’s the worst idea to distract ourselves from--”

The memory of their performance dampens the mood in the room a little.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “I wouldn’t hate that.”

“Cool,” Bucky says. “Let me shower. And then--”

He hesitates and Steve raises an eyebrow.

“Maybe we can eat together,” Bucky says, taking a breath. “If you want to. If you’re still open to...trying this.”

“This,” Steve says slowly.

Bucky seems to hesitate on a word.

“Friendship,” he says, and then quickly-- “Or, partnership. For the Olympics.”

It’s maybe something they should have considered months ago, before they stepped foot on a plane to Wakanda. It’s late, but better late than never. 

Steve nods.

“Partnership,” he says. “Okay. I guess we can’t kill each other over a bowl of cereal.”

“Speak for yourself,” Bucky says, lips quirking up at the corners. “I’m lethal with a spoon.”

Steve snorts and Bucky gets out of bed to gather his things for the shower. He’s almost out the door past Steve when Steve stops him, hand to Bucky’s shoulder.

“Hey,” he says.

Bucky looks at him, slate blue eyes wide and--warm.

“Thank you,” Steve says quietly. “For everything.”

Bucky’s expression softens further.

“Steve,” he says. “You don’t have to thank me for anything. Thank you for telling me. I’m sorry--I’m really, really sorry you felt you had to. I did that to you and it wasn’t my place and, I’m really sorry. I hope one day you can forgive me.”

“There’s nothing to forgive, Buck,” Steve says in surprise. “How were you supposed to know? I would have hated me too, in your shoes.”

Bucky, for some reason, seems to look a little brighter. Steve doesn’t know what he’s said.

“Would you have?” Bucky says. “I don’t know. I’m starting to suspect you might be a good person, Steve Rogers.”

Steve tries not to smile. He wrinkles his face, looks outraged instead.

“I’m insulted! That’s a direct attack on my character!”

Bucky laughs at that.

“Well at least that’s back to normal,” he says with a grin. Then he shakes his head and claps Steve on the shoulder. “I know we’re not close and we’re not friends, Steve. But I’ve known you longer than almost everyone else in my life. I don’t know if it’s in my place to say you can come talk to me if you need, but. I want to say it anyway, just in case.”

Steve doesn’t know what to do with that, so he just nods.

“Thank you,” he says.

Bucky smiles and lets go.

As he goes to take his shower, Steve kind of stumbles back to his bed and collapses into it.

It’s still warm from Bucky, the smell of his skin all over Steve’s sheets.

It’s maybe the first time he realizes it, in any kind of magnitude, that this smell--Bucky’s scent--is one that is comforting because it’s one that’s familiar to him. It’s a scent he’s been around, for almost his entire life, just like Bucky said.

**

Sam’s hockey game is in the middle of the afternoon. The U.S. men’s team is facing off against Sweden, which is apparently a very good team and takes hockey very very seriously.

“Most people take hockey very very seriously, to be fair,” Bucky says.

Sam is already at the hockey rink with Thor and the rest of the team. Steve gets breakfast with Bucky and the two of them wait for Natasha and Clint to join them before heading over.

They stand, side-by-side, at the shuttle stop, Bucky on his phone and Steve watching the crowds of athletes go by. There’s a strange peace between the two of them, something that’s tenuous, bordering on stable. Steve had expected breakfast to be awkward, this new truce as hesitant as their enmity had been hot, but it hadn’t been anything like that at all. If anything, after an initial, embarrassed, awkward pause, Bucky had asked Steve about what Spotify playlist he had been skating to lately and Steve had told him and then they had sat at breakfast, scrolling through their phones, sharing songs, and sometimes eating a hearty breakfast.

Bucky was funny, Steve was surprised to discover. He loved music, he had too many games on his phone, and their reading material was similar. Before Bucky had pulled up his Spotify app, Steve had spotted the Kindle app on his first screen and he hadn’t been able to help himself, had asked what he was reading.

“Oh,” Bucky had smiled. “Uh, there’s this book--Circe? It’s kind of the old Greek myths and the story of Odysseus, but told through the witch Circe. Kind of nerdy, I know.”

“Oh!” Steve had startled, surprised. “That’s on my list! I finished Song of Achilles a few months ago and--”

“Did you love it?” Bucky had nearly shouted. His eyes had brightened, his face so eager it was nearly shining. “I _love_ that book! It made me _bawl_.”

“Me too!” Steve had said, turning a little pink to admit, but Bucky had just nodded vigorously. “The ending--I had to close the book, I was crying so hard.”

That had made Bucky so evidently excited that he had tripped over his words trying to express them. It had been so unexpected, so _pleasant_ , that Steve would have been stunned into silence if Bucky hadn’t proved himself to be the consummate conversationalist. He hadn’t let Steve crawl into his own head once, had just leaned forward, cereal forgotten, and then they had spent a good fifteen minutes going through their favorite genres and the books they’ve been reading in between practices and competitions.

They wait now and it’s still like that, Bucky looking up from his phone every few seconds to remark on something, easily, as though he could do this all day--talk, or just be friends. It’s almost overwhelming to Steve, a person who has made maybe five friends in his life. Bucky really is made for other people; he carries himself with an ease born of confidence, not social anxiety, but for the first time, Steve finds it pleasant instead of insufferable.

Is this what it’s like, to be friends with Bucky Barnes?

Steve’s jarred from his thoughts by Natasha and Clint arriving at the same time.

“Which sport is hockey again?” Clint asks, wrinkling his face.

“The violent one,” Natasha says. She has on a different USA windbreaker, over-sized and white, with blue stripes at the shoulders. It looks like the 90s spit up on her, but in the most stylish manner imaginable. Her hair is tied back and her eyeliner is perfect.

“Who you dressed up for, Romanoff?” Bucky asks with a grin.

“I like violence,” Natasha says. “Knock a couple of teeth out of an athlete and that really gets me going.”

The shuttle arrives and she’s the first one to board. Clint stares after her thoughtfully, then taps his front teeth with his index finger.

“He--wouldn’t,” Bucky blinks after him as Clint calls after Natasha.

“I don’t think anyone is in the position to say what Clint Barton will or will not do,” Steve mutters close behind him.

“That’s concerning,” Bucky says.

“You’re telling me,” Steve replies. There isn’t a day in their friendship that Steve hasn’t been concerned about Clint Barton.

Steve gets on the shuttle after Bucky. Most of the seats are filled by other athletes. Natasha sits near the back and Clint sits next to her, leaning toward her, undoubtedly asking her about missing teeth and the aesthetics of it.

For a moment, Steve gets that nervous, unsettled feeling he gets whenever his anxiety spikes and he has to navigate human experiences. He only went to a normal school for a little while, but he was always picked last for dodgeball.

Then, Bucky looks up at him from his seat. For the first time in days, he catches his eyes, on purpose.

“Steve,” he smiles. “Sit next to me?”

Steve feels overwhelmed and jittery, but he slides in next to Bucky.

“Thanks,” he says.

Bucky just grins at him and then, giving him a look that says We’re Doing This, offers him his hand, palm up.

Steve looks at it, considers, and takes it.

  
Hockey, as it turns out, is not only violent, but _loud_. 

“What!” Steve shouts, because he can’t hear Bucky over the roar of the crowd.

“I _said_ , did something happen!” Bucky shouts back.

They’re sitting next to each other in the crowd, Natasha and Clint to Bucky’s right. The game started ten minutes ago and Steve has no real idea what’s been happening or if it’s good or bad because in hockey, it seems, people scream for _everything_.

“I don’t know!” Steve says.

“ _What?_ ” Bucky shouts and Steve shakes his head.

“ _I said don’t know!_ ”

Bucky still can’t seem to hear him, because he points to his ear and shakes his head.

“Oh for the love of--” Steve mutters to himself and then he leans in closer to Bucky’s ear.

“ _I don’t_ \--” he starts to say and then someone shoves into him from the side and he sprawls closer, his mouth ending up on Bucky’s ear.

Steve braces a hand on Bucky’s shoulder and straightens, his face red, looking horrified for _kissing Bucky’s ear_ , but Bucky just looks at him and throws his head back and _laughs_.

“You ass!” Steve shouts and apparently _this time_ Bucky can hear, because he laughs some more, his face bright and happy.

Clint and Natasha look away from the game for long enough to give both of them a look.

Bucky ignores them both and snakes his arm around Steve’s lower back. Steve knows it’s for show, but it makes his heart hammer in his chest anyway. It’s been a long time since anyone held him this close, even for pretend.

Bucky leans in closer. He makes as though to say something to Steve’s ear and Steve, being distracted as he is, turns to hear better. It takes him a full second to realize what Bucky’s going to do before he does it.

“No!” he shouts, but it’s too late.

Bucky’s mouth is on Steve’s ear and he kisses it, loud and wet and sloppy.

“Ugh!” Steve says, turning redder and Bucky laughs some more, the _jerk_. Steve can’t contain his grumbling.

Someone on the ice does something and people _scream_ some more.

Bucky doesn’t remove his arm from Steve’s back.

Steve can feel his cheeks continue to burn, but he doesn’t lean away either.

  
Eventually, Steve understands that things _are_ happening and that the things are good for the U.S. men’s hockey team and, most importantly, Sam. There’s some shots and a penalty and he thinks Thor scores? Honestly, everything happens so fast and he supposes it’s all rather exciting, but his eyes are used to fine lines and clean performances. All of this ramming into each other is making it difficult for him to watch and even worse to follow.

“Is that good?” he keeps asking Bucky and Natasha. “Did Sam get a penalty? Did he defend that shot? Where’s the puck? Are those two guys supposed to be brawling?”

Bucky seems to shake with laughter at every question, but eventually Natasha gets fed up with him.

“Clint, shoot him with your rifle,” she instructs.

Clint just blinks between the three of them.

“Okay,” he says. “But it’d really help if we were on a slope of snow and I had skis on my feet.”

“Your event is _so weird_ ,” Natasha then says, turning on him and Clint beams.

“Thank you!”

“Don’t shoot my boyfriend,” Bucky says to Clint. “I’ll have to find a whole new one and no one’s going to be weirder or angrier than this one.”

“Hey!” Steve protests.

“Is that a draw?” Clint looks, confused, between the two of them.

“Figure skaters are weird and Barnes and Rogers are weirder,” Natasha says, dryly. “Speaking of, Barnes, Rogers, how do you feel about public displays of affection?”

Suddenly, Steve hears the crowd go absolutely wild around them. Like, wilder than usual.

“Uh,” he says. “Why?”

“Because Americans have ruined sports with the kiss cam,” Natasha says. “Also, surprise. You two are on one right now.”

Steve’s mouth drops open and he and Bucky both follow the line of Natasha’s arm as she points to the screen floating above the hockey rink.

Steve’s face, surprised, mouth agape, turns a pink that every single one of the thousands of people live and hundreds of thousands of people watching the event around the world, sees up close. Bucky, next to him, looks equally embarrassed, but in a Bucky Barnes kind of way, which means that his hair is nicely mussed up and his smile is abashed with just the right hint of charming, and his entire, stupid face, is outrageously handsome in the middle of it all.

“What d’ya say, Stevie?” Bucky says, scratching his nose. “I think everyone’s yelling at us to kiss in Swedish and Wakandan.”

Steve, who has been busy staring at his face on the screen with the little heart around him and  Bucky, only now notices the chants around them.

He only understands the English, but he’s almost certain that no matter the language, every person in the stadium is chanting _kiss him, kiss him, kiss him!_

This is, without a doubt, the most embarrassing and spontaneous and stupid thing situation he’s ever been a part of. And Steve threw himself into an Olympic event with a fake boyfriend.

“Don’t leave me hangin’,” Bucky says, face pink and bright and laughing. “We’re getting heckled by _Swedes_!”

“You’re an _ass_ ,” Steve complains, his chest warm, his entire body tingling with embarrassment and--something else.

Bucky grins at him and winks and Clint chants _kiss him kiss him kiss him_ and Natasha rolls her eyes and goddamnit it all to hell, Steve takes Bucky’s face in between his hands and kisses him, as instructed.

The cheering is louder than it was for the hockey and when Steve pulls away, his entire face is burning so hot, he has to cover it with his hands

Next to him, Bucky laughs loudly. The _ass_.

  
The men’s hockey team wins, as it so happens, which Steve understands because the screams around him seem to be elated rather than devastated. Steve even gets swept up in it near the end, on his feet, shouting about penalties and shots and fouls and other words he hears Bucky and Natasha and Clint shouting right next to him.

When they spill out of the hockey arena to wait for Sam, it’s in high spirits, laughing and relaxed in the middle of a place that’s designed to stress them out.

Bucky’s holding Steve’s hand, loosely, and Steve doesn’t even mind, he’s laughing so hard at Clint’s sad attempts to speak Russian to Natasha.

“My guys!” a triumphant voice suddenly says and the group turns around to see Sam, still in his hockey jersey, a grin stretching from ear to ear.

“And?” Natasha says, eyes narrowed.

“And my girl!” Sam says and slings an arm around Natasha’s petite shoulders.

“I’ve been learning too much Russian for you to cut in, Wilson!” Clint grumbles.

“Is that what that was?” Natasha remarks dryly and Clint protests and the rest of the group laughs.

“What’s all this?” Sam asks, looking between Steve and Bucky. “Someone told me something about figure skaters and public kissing—that wasn’t—?”

“We were getting heckled by the entire crowd!” Steve groans. “I had no choice!”

“What a good f—boyfriend you are,” Bucky says with a half-smirk. “A guy could really get used to such heartwarming declarations.”

Steve elbows Bucky in the side and Bucky groans in pain, much to Steve’s pleasure.

“All right, enough of the Barnes and Rogers show,” Sam says, with an eye roll. “It’s my day! Anyone hungry? I could go for a chicken wrap or seven.”

“I’m always hungry,” Clint says.

“Me too,” Bucky replies, “But Steve and I have practice.”

“You go again on Tuesday, right?” Sam asks.

“Yeah,” Steve says. He doesn’t quite manage to keep the nerves out of his voice.

Sam squeezes his shoulder. To the side, Natasha and Bucky whisper furiously about rumors they’ve heard, costumes ripped, shoelaces missing, skating blades dulled when they shouldn’t be. It’s all very petty and figure skating scandal.

“Whatever you guys are doing, it looks better,” Sam says quietly. “Are you okay?”

Steve’s eyes flicker over to Bucky. Whatever they are now, it’s better than what they were before.

“I don’t know,” Steve says quietly. “I hope so.”

“Just trust your skills,” Sam says. “And trust Barnes. And if you can’t do that, then remember that nobody wants this more than you two. If you don’t trust anything else, then trust that.”

Steve nods, his fingers tingling with anticipation.

“Good luck,” Sam says with a smile. “Make it a good practice and it’ll prepare you for a good performance.”

“Couldn’t have a worse performance,” Steve mutters and Sam gives him a warning look. Chastened, Steve nods. “I’ll make it a good practice.”

“Ready to go, Rogers?” Bucky asks, emerging from his discussion.

Steve nods. Sam gives him an encouraging look, looking at the space between Steve and Bucky.

Steve shakes off his nerves and offers Bucky his hand.

Bucky looks surprised, but not displeased. He gives Steve a look that says _are you sure_? to which Steve can’t say he is, but he nods anyway. For a moment Steve thinks he’s not going to do it and he’s almost nervous about it, ready to retreat. But then Bucky offers Steve a tentative smile and takes his hand.

They walk back to Olympic Village like that, hand-in-hand and, for the first time, Steve doesn’t feel angry about it.

  
“Are you two going to stand there staring at each other or are you going to try to skate?” Fury grumbles. He’s standing outside the ice, his USA jacket large and puffy across his shoulders, like some kind of figure skating Hot Dad. He gestures at the ice and at the space in between his two skaters.

Steve and Bucky, for their parts, stand not on opposite sides of the ice, but far enough away from one another to make it awkward. It’s a different kind of awkward than it was before, the vitriol and heat between them gone and replaced by something a little uncertain and a lot intangible. Bucky looks up and makes eye contact and the smile he gives Steve is pure nerves. It’s one thing to pretend to be boyfriends on camera, or in public. It’s another thing to bring this truce to the ice and see if, putting aside their differences, they can make something of this. There’s so much more to lose now, that the weight of this partnership suddenly seems daunting in a way it wasn’t before. What if they come together and it’s still not enough? They’re out of options. It’s do or die.  
  
After a minute of dithering, Steve takes a breath and skates forward.

“I was thinking,” Steve says quietly as he uses his toe picks to come to a stop in front of the other boy.

“Yeah?” Bucky asks. He looks relieved.

“When we practice individually, we only have to think about ourselves, only our bodies,” Steve says.

Bucky nods.

“We spend hours learning choreography, not just...learning the steps, but seeing how they feel to us and changing them to fit _us_ , not the other way around.”

“Yeah,” Bucky agrees.

“We’re--” Steve swallows here, suddenly nervous.

“Steve, it’s okay,” Bucky says gently. “I won’t get mad.”

“Why would you get mad?” Steve shoots back before catching himself. Vestiges of the old Steve. He gives Bucky an apologetic look and runs a hand through his hair. “I think maybe we were going about this all wrong. We were learning choreography for two people, but doing it as individuals.”

If Bucky understands what Steve is trying to say, he doesn’t give any indication. Steve almost chickens out then, he’s so unsure if this is a good idea or if he’s right at all.

And then Bucky offers him a hand.

“If we want to perform as a pair, we need to learn to dance as a pair,” he says softly. “Is that what you mean?”

Steve nods.

“Are you okay with that?” Bucky asks.

“With what?” Steve asks. Bucky doesn’t take his hand back and Steve looks at it, considering.

“Me touching you,” Bucky says. “If we’re going to learn to dance together, I have to learn what you feel like. Is that--okay?”

Steve could say a lot of things to that, but he finds himself a little tongue-tied, a little warm around the neck, maybe even a little bashful. He’s spent his entire career skating by himself. He’s spent most of that time in the rink and the rest of the time with his mother, as her condition grew worse and worse. Steve isn’t naive, he’s not even a virgin, but he is inexperienced, in bed and out. He just hasn’t spent a lot of time getting physically close to people.

He knows this is different. This is _skating_ , but the principle is almost the same.

He knows that Bucky will have to hold him close, his hands all over Steve’s body, because Steve’s the smaller one, he’s the one thrown and lifted and caught. It wasn’t unpleasant, even when they hated each other’s guts, but this is something else entirely--to be held and touched by someone you’re starting to like.

As a friend, of course.

“I’ll be respectful, Steve,” Bucky says quickly, misinterpreting Steve’s silence. “I promise. This is strictly professional, nothing else.”

“I--” Steve says, swallowing. “Okay. Yeah.”

He should probably say more, correct Bucky’s misconception, but he’s so daunted and nervous by the prospect of Bucky inches away from him that his head forgets to translate his thoughts into human words.

“Okay,” Bucky smiles. He offers his hand again.

Steve takes it and Bucky skates close.

“Coach Fury,” Bucky says out loud. “Can you turn it to something slow?”

“I’m not running a relationship bootcamp here,” Fury grumbles, but the two of them hear him turn and bark orders at Coulson.

“Breathe, Steve,” Bucky says to him. He’s looking straight into Steve’s eyes, one hand on Steve’s shoulder, the other held gently at his side. Steve only realizes now that he hasn’t taken a breath in nearly a minute. “Can you do that for me?”

Steve tries to take a breath, but finds he’s wound so tight that he can’t.

“Okay, that’s okay,” Bucky says. “Just follow me. Across the ice.”

Bucky skates back and Steve, holding onto Bucky as he is, has no choice but to follow.

The slick movement under his feet dislodges something in him that had been held tight in his chest. He takes a deep, gasping breath.

“There you go, Stevie,” Bucky says with a kind, bright smile. Bucky takes in a deep breath and blows it out. He does it again and again, until Steve follows, his breathing and his movements following after Bucky, chasing him.

“Come on,” Bucky says, almost luminous in front of him. “Let’s skate.”

  
Steve has never had a partner before, on ice or even off. He’s imagined it before, occasionally, when he’s watched pairs figure skating or the ice dancers or Sam with one of his girlfriends or even Natasha, flirting with another figure skater. He’s seen Bucky too, leaning in close to any number of women, foreign and American, who touch his chest lightly and lean up toward him and he smiles that smile of his, the one that reaches his eyes and makes the person in front of him sigh.

He realizes there’s more to partnership than just chemistry, but chemistry is necessary too. Desire and trust, to make anything like this believable.

And Steve, who has never felt that kind of way with anyone, not really, doesn’t expect this to be any different. He thinks Bucky will learn his movements and his physicality, to better help their jumps and angles, a means towards an ends.

He just doesn’t expect this, the way his heart seems to pick up near his ribcage, or the way the adrenaline seems to spark up and down his spine. Bucky touches his arms and holds his lower back. Everywhere his hands move, Steve feels his skin warm. They spring apart and come back together. They spin in circles, learn the shape of each other’s hands, the length of each other’s thighs. Bucky puts a palm against the back of Steve’s neck. Steve puts a palm against Bucky’s chest.

They don’t break eye contact, not once, and the feeling is unexpectedly breathtaking. Everywhere Bucky touches him, Steve feels his skin tingle under fabric, an electrical undercurrent that dances underneath. Bucky lets out little sighs, his cheeks glowing pink, a smile spilled across his face.

At some point, they realize that Fury has turned on the slow music, so they skate around the rink in a circle, follow one another slowly, moving apart, and moving back together, like magnets circling, limbs light and heavy at the same time, a drunk, heady feeling moving through them.

They skate like it’s breathing and they skate together like a breath that can only be taken if both of them are exhaling. It’s luxurious. It’s mesmerizing.

Bucky offers his hand again and Steve takes it and Bucky gives him a breathless, soft kind of smile, something unlike anything he’s ever seen from him before, and Steve takes his hand, leans back, farther and farther, until his hand is skimming the ice, he’s nearly flat against it, and Bucky’s spinning him in a large, controlled death spiral.

They spin like that, around and around, until Steve regains his balance and Bucky lets go and Steve sinks into a graceful sit spin and comes back up, turning revolution after revolution, until the momentum finally runs out and he feels himself sprawl, arms out, puffs of laughter from his chest.

It’s only then that he realizes that Bucky’s holding him again, that his hand is at Steve’s lower back, that when Steve looks up, it’s into the bright, grey-blue eyes of the most beautiful boy he has ever seen.

He’s flushed with feeling; it crawls up from his toes, spreads through his legs and his chest, across his arms, to his very fingertips. It trickles over him like molasses, the sensation of something so very right he can’t believe he didn’t see it before.

“Are you okay?” Bucky grins, voice a whisper.

“I’m a little mad,” Steve whispers back. For a second, Bucky’s smile flickers. “We could have been skating like that this whole time and instead we finished _what_?”

That makes Bucky’s face light back up again. He grins, straightens, and helps Steve up.

Steve feels--God, there’s no real way to describe it. It’s a lightness of being he hadn’t realized he was capable of. He has feathers on his back; he could just fly away on the exhilaration of this alone.

“I think I know how to win this thing,” Bucky whispers. “Do you trust me?”

It’s the weirdest thing, because two days ago Steve would have said absolutely, without a single fucking doubt, unequivocally, and irrevocably, _no_. Now, though, with this feeling in his chest and Bucky’s hair all light and floppy and Steve’s skin tingling anywhere, Bucky could ask to throw him into a triple axel and he would say yes.

It makes no sense, it’s almost impossible, but Steve thinks he does.

For some inexplicable, otherworldly reason, he trusts his arch-nemesis.

“Yes,” he says.

“In that case,” Bucky says with a warm, excited grin that reaches his eyes and makes them crinkle at the corner--Steve will have to remember that for later, “I’m going to need you to get ready.”

“For what?” Steve asks, raising an eyebrow.

“For Fury to absolutely rip us a new one.”

Steve’s eyebrows couldn’t go any higher if they tried, but he had said he trusts Bucky and he had meant it, so when Bucky skates them both over to Fury and explains that in the _stupidest_ , most _reckless_ , and absolutely most _unprecedented_ event in the history of the Olympics, he wants to change the music they’re skating to, four days before their pairs competition, well--

Steve’s there when Fury yells at them both so loudly his single eyeball nearly pops out of his extremely irritated and terribly stressed, bald head.

**

It’s four days of practicing, just up-to-their-eyeballs in skating practice, from dawn until nearly dusk. Bucky doesn’t think he’s ever been this exhausted. He doesn’t remember the last time he had this much fun, either.

Once the dam breaks between him and Steve, it seems to break for good. Whatever vestiges of enmity, of coldness that remained between the two of them evaporate, almost like they had been fake to begin with. Bucky wakes up with the sun and Steve is in his bed, sleepy and grumpy, like a disgruntled cat, and Bucky plods over to him, knees on Steve’s bed, and shakes him awake. Steve grumbles and tosses and tries to hide under the covers and Bucky pulls them away from him and Steve yells at him, but sleepy, and then they both trudge to the bathroom to wash up and get ready for another day of skating paradise.

Even exhausted, aching tired, it’s one of Bucky’s favorite parts of the day. For the first time in as long as he can remember, Bucky finds himself happy to get out of bed. He finds something worth waking up for.

  
At night, bone-tired, and unable to utter another word, they trudge back from the rink, sweaty and knocking into one another from how sleepy they are.

Still, that first night, after they both shower and are ready to collapse, Steve turns to him, in his oversized pajamas, and says, “Hey, want to go outside?”

It’s chilly outside and Bucky’s in his pjs too, but something about Steve there, framed in the moonlight streaming in through their glass door, arms of his pj top inching past his fingers, his huge glasses on, makes Bucky unable to say no.

“Okay,” he says, chest full of--something.

He follows Steve outside, onto the cool balcony, and they stand side to side, an inch separating them, and watch the moon bright and high in the sky.

“I’ve never seen a place as beautiful as this,” Steve sighs.

“Olympic Village?” Bucky asks, wrinkling his face.

He looks down from their balcony and sees the grounds crawling with athletes. The sounds of laughter and merrymaking float up from below.

Bucky feels light and happy, like he could float away from how content he and his brain chemicals are in this moment.

“No, dummy,” Steve says. “Wakanda.”

“It is beautiful, isn’t it?” Bucky smiles. He’s looking at Steve and trying not to be a cliche and failing, desperately.

The moon glints off of golden strands of hair, the light illuminating Steve Rogers, all five-foot-four inches of him. He’s beautiful, Bucky thinks. He’s always been so _beautiful_.

Steve doesn’t notice, just smiles and stretches, and turns toward Bucky.

“When this is all over--let’s come back sometime,” he says. “Not as athletes, but just as--two guys. Who like Wakanda.”

Bucky--well, his heart flutters at that. It catches, somewhere near his throat.

He leans in closer to Steve, closing that one inch of space between them, pressing side-to-side.

“Hey, I’d like that,” Bucky finally says with a smile that spreads across his face. “I’d like a whole lot.”

  
The next night, they do the same thing.

The third night, Steve doesn’t even have to ask. Bucky joins him on the balcony and has the hardest time not reaching over and pressing a palm to Steve’s cheek, turning him, and kissing him on the mouth.

**

The short program, Bucky Barnes will one day tell his children or his grandchildren or whatever, is where dreams go to live and hopes go to die. Bucky’s had short programs that have killed both his hopes and dreams, but this--fucking hell, this is different.

“Bucky,” a reporter from NBC asks him as he and Steve arrive for the competition. “You and Steve had a disastrous team program. What have you changed since then? Will we see a different Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers tonight?”

Bucky shakes his head a little ruefully.

 _What has changed since then?_ The reporter asks.

Bucky sees Steve’s blond head stop at another reporter, this one from a Wakandan news outlet. They had been doing nothing but practicing for the past four days, from sunrise until sunset. Their bodies are beyond exhausted at this point, they’ve metamorphosed into some other entity entirely. But they’re not only okay with their new program, they’re _happy_ with it.

Bucky thinks about all of those hours at the rink, this time with someone by his side, and he’s surprised to find he feels like a new skater, like he’s in a new sport altogether. Not only is it easier to get out of bed in the morning, but Bucky _looks forward_ to it. It’s different, he thinks, when you’re at the rink with someone who makes you laugh, whose smile you strive to catch, whose breathing you’ve memorized because his breathing is what keeps you alive. It’s different when every time you skate, there’s someone there to catch you, someone whose touches light up your entire spine. On the ice, of course.

  
Steve had been skeptical, at first, but Bucky had opened his phone, scrolled to his Spotify playlist and explained.

What better song for a pair of reckless, stupid rebels, then a song about reckless, stupid rebels?

Their short program, set to Portugal. The Man’s _Feel it Still_ , has the exact right feel to it, upbeat, bold, with just enough of an edge for Bucky to throw Steve and for Steve to land it on the ice.

  
“I think you’ll be pleasantly surprised,” Bucky says to the reporter, with a smile. “We have something we didn’t have before. Don’t count us out yet.”

“What changed?” the reporter presses again.

This time, Bucky doesn’t have to think about answering.

Instead, he finds Steve appear at his side, pressing himself to the space there under his arm, a space Steve has discovered is just the right size for him.

“Just about everything,” Steve answers for Bucky, with a smirk, and this time, heart thumping, grin absolutely breaking over his face, Bucky leans down to kiss _his_ fake boyfriend for the cameras.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ [Feel It Still by Portugal. The Man](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBkHHoOIIn8) would be an absolutely _boss_ song to skate to imo!
> 
> \+ As ever, please forgive my fudging timelines, taking artistic liberties with figure skating terminology, etc.
> 
> \+ I did, in fact, bawl on a public bus while finishing [Song of Achilles](https://www.amazon.com/Song-Achilles-Novel-Madeline-Miller/dp/0062060627) by Madeline Miller. If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend it. It will change your life and tear your heart clean out of your chest.
> 
> \+ This chapter was very soft and very fun to write--enjoy it while you can! Dumb boys will be very dumb boys, and don't you ever forget.


	10. nine. (a celebration)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You might notice that there's going to be 15 chapters instead of 12 now! That's bc I finally finished writing the entirety of this fic (!!!) and it divides better this way. Also, there's just so much dumb left to get through. I apologize.

Clint wins gold in the biathlon. No one is remotely surprised because there’s no shot like Clint, but everyone _is_ thrilled, excited to have an excuse to party in a foreign land, in the middle of the Olympics, with other like-minded and exceptionally fit athletes.

It doesn’t hurt that Steve and Bucky have the performance of their very short pairs career. There’s a lot to celebrate, as it turns out.

**

From the beginning it had been everything their first performance hadn’t been; smooth, natural, connected--magic. The song change had come as a shock, of course, causing ripples through the skating commentary, all negative. _No one does this_ , the commentators and reporters all whispered. _It’s Olympics suicide._

It hadn’t taken much to shut everyone up. After all, Bucky had chosen the perfect song for them.

In the last day, _Feel It Still._ had surged on iTunes and the YouTube video of their performance had just over 2 million views, and counting.

  
Most of the skating commentary _after_ was about their performance, but it was about them too.

 _Rogers and Barnes look transformed_ , NBC had written.

 _What I saw was magic, breathtaking and unparalleled_ , The New York Times reported.

 _We’re seeing a new kind of pair; a new face of figure skating_ , CBS said.

 _These two Olympic skaters are dating and breaking every expectation and now I want my own rivals to lovers Olympic Dream to come true_ , a BuzzFeed listicle gushed.

 

“That looked an awful lot like chemistry,” Natasha commented after, eyebrow raised, and Bucky had shushed her, blushing.

Steve was talking to a reporter after their skate, a small teddy bear in his arms, waiting for their results, flushed and happy.

Bucky had felt a surge of affection he couldn’t quite keep off his face.

“Oh no,” Natasha said softly, watching him. “You’ve gone and fallen in love with your arch-rival, you absolutely maddening cliché of a human.”

Bucky’s heart had lurched at her words, heat rising to his cheeks, and he had protested, denying it.

“It’s just skating, Nat,” he had muttered, unconvincingly.

But then Steve had come back to his side and his heart had lurched again, too obvious to ignore or explain away.

“Ready?” Steve grinned at him and offered his hand, a wink to show him that this was their little joke, their little secret.

“Ready,” Bucky had said, ignoring his chest, his hope, his disappointment, how dry his throat felt, all of it. “To get that gold.”

  
They had gotten phenomenal marks across the board, not only for them, but objectively. It had been cumulatively high, high enough to defend through most of the night, until the Sokovians had performed.

Even getting edged out of first place by the twins didn’t dampen their good mood.

At the end of the night, the Maximoffs stood in contention for gold, Rhodes and Stark for silver, and Bucky and Steve for bronze.

“You know what they say about the long program,” Steve said mischievously as they had hugged at the end of the night, both nearly delirious with relief and happiness, Bucky getting his arms around Steve’s waist and spinning him around, much to Steve’s chagrin and delight.

“It’ll kill you?” Bucky had laughed.

“No, asshole! It’s long! Don’t fuck it up!”

Bucky had laughed even more, had felt lighter than he could ever remember feeling.

  
Later, as they had walked back toward the Village, high on the relieved feeling of success, Steve had bumped Bucky’s shoulder and asked, “Are you glad you got out of bed today?”

And Bucky, who had never been asked that question before, by any partner, romantic or otherwise, had felt his heart kind of tumble in his chest.

“Yeah,” he had managed to say, once he could stop the beating against his ribcage. “I am.”

“I’m glad,” Steve had smiled at him. “We’ll make sure you feel that way tomorrow too.”

  
And Bucky had. He had woken up in the morning, before Steve, and looked over to his partner’s--his _friend’s_ \--bed and seen him sleeping, peaceful in his sleep in a way that he never was awake, and he had known, in a quiet sort of way, that every day he could wake up and skate with Steve was a day he would always look forward to.

**

“We are going to get _crunk_ ,” Clint says now, gold medal around his neck, a shot glass of some Wakandan liquor held up high.

“No one says crunk anymore, Clint,” Sam says. He has another game tomorrow, so he’s really only here for the company, but he has a shot glass in front of him too-- _one shot won’t kill your shot put or whatever, Wilson!_ Clint had yelled in his face.

“We are going to get _lit_!” Clint amends triumphantly.

Steve and Bucky and Natasha look at one another.

“No?” Clint blinks.

“Eh,” Natasha moves her hand from side to side.

“Whatever!” Clint declares and knocks back the shot. “Time to celebrate me!”

“You celebrate you everyday,” Steve says dryly. “How’s this any different?”

“Because, Steven,” Clint says, smacking his lips. “Today, we are all doing it.”

Steve snorts and looks at Clint dubiously, a filled shot glass in his hand. He and Bucky catch each other’s eyes and Bucky grins. He can’t quite help himself; he leans down and kisses Steve on the cheek.

It’s okay, he justifies to himself. They’re fake dating, after all.

Steve colors prettily and Bucky grins widely and Natasha rolls her eyes so hard she nearly collapses on the spot.

It’s going to be fine, Bucky thinks, a little desperately, watching Steve tip the shot glass back. This was all fake. It would be totally, completely fine.  
  
  
Celebrating Clint, it turns out, involves a lot more shots than anyone, especially Sam, was planning on taking.  
  
The problem isn’t that Clint is a derelict; it’s more that Wakanda gives them something to celebrate and athletes, well, they like a good celebration. Olympic Village is teeming with triumphant athletes, athletes with multiple days in between their events, athletes who need to blow off steam, and athletes who need to drink their sorrows away. In the middle of all of that is athletes celebrating their successful athlete friends. Anyway, Wakanda has all manners of colorful drinks and endless food, all of which is mouthwatering, and, most importantly, served by these cyborg bartenders that customize drinks to each athlete based on a scan of their retinas.

“They scan you, see what you’re deficient in, what vitamins and minerals and proteins and all of that you need to maintain for your events, based on your body type and mass and metabolism, and mix a drink!” Tony is explaining, loudly, to Bucky. “It’s amazing! It’s science!”

“I love science!” Bucky says, equally loudly, three shots in.

“To science!” Tony says, four shots in, and picks up shot number five to toast with Bucky.

Bucky tips back the bright blue concoction and it slides down his throat smoothly, not even a burn. It makes him think he’s drinking something other than alcohol, which is a bit of a problem because now, _four_ shots in, Bucky keeps drinking without realizing he’s getting drunker and drunker.

He laughs louder than he usually does, the anxiety and depression rolling off his shoulders for the time being. He loses himself in the music, in the body heat of the athletes around him. He doesn’t even remember what bar Clint had picked, only that it was walking distance to the Village, had free drinks for Olympic athletes, and was decorated with colorful Wakandan masks and fabrics all across the walls. Also the robots!

He leans against the counter, half-listening to Tony and half-watching the crowd sway out of the corner of his eyes.

His head swims pleasantly, his muscles finally regaining some of their vigor after another day of practice.

Bucky smiles to himself, down at his hands.

After their short program last night, he and Steve had gone right back to the rink this morning, determined to practice their long program, to get it perfect, leave no room for error. They had strung together three songs they loved, from both of their Spotify accounts, and the result was something that was so them, if there was something that could be them, and every time Bucky skated to it, every time Bucky got to put his hands on Steve, well--

Even tipsy, his brain recognizes this change in him, in how he sees Steve. Bucky doesn’t see arrogance or entitlement anymore; now he just sees someone eager to win, someone who was born to be on ice. Bucky watches Steve, maybe closer than he should, and he learns from what he sees. Steve Rogers makes Bucky Barnes a better skater. Maybe that had been the case all along.

“What’re you smiling at?” Tony asks, squinting at Bucky.

“Nothing,” Bucky says, but he just smiles some more.

“Hey--” Tony says and beckons Bucky closer.

Bucky raises an eyebrow dubiously, but does as he’s told.

“How is he?” Tony asks. “Like. In bed.”

Whatever Bucky had been expecting, it wasn’t this.

He flushes almost immediately.

“You two have--?” Tony raises an eyebrow. “I mean come on, there are condoms everywhere. And lube. Do you know how much sex everyone is having around here? So much. Like. All the time!”

“Shut up, Tony,” Bucky coughs, embarrassed.

“Jesus Christ,” Tony says, eyes wide. “You’re not!”

Bucky coughs some more.

“Well what’s keeping you?” Tony asks and cranes his head so that he can look at Steve more obviously. Bucky hisses at him and drags him back down. “What! I mean he’s small, but he looks energetic. Is he energetic? You should do something about that before someone else does, I mean unless you’re both asexual or something--?”

“We’re not,” Bucky says. He’s so embarrassed to be having this conversation. “I mean I’m not. He’s--I don’t know.”

“Don’t you want to?” Tony asks, whispering conspiratorially. “He’s cute.”

“He is,” Bucky says. “Cute. I want to.”

He swallows, a little mortified that he’s admitting this out loud, but he’s four shots in and Tony’s getting him another one. He _does_ want to, like. A lot.

“Aren’t you dating?” Tony asks. “Just take him back to your room and take him to bed. Barton’s--well, Barton’s probably going to pass out at the bar. And Wilson keeps sneaking off to see some snowboarder.”

“Our sex life is none of your business, Tony,” Bucky says, trying to go for dry and probably ending up sounding like some kind of neurotic virgin. He grasps the bright green shot and knocks it back, trying very hard not to think about taking Steve to bed, which, now that Tony’s mentioned it, he really does have such an interest in doing.

“Well have you at least told him you think he’s cute?” Tony frowns.

“No,” Bucky says. “Should I?”

Should he?

Tony blinks. “You’re going about this all wrong.”

“What part?” Bucky asks, squinting.

“The dating part!” Tony says, throwing his hands up. “You’re not sleeping with him! You haven’t told him he’s cute! What if he thinks you don’t like him!”

Bucky’s just drunk enough to let Tony fucking Stark get to him. He sways a little in his seat and then looks around for Steve, panicking a little.

Maybe Tony’s right. Maybe Steve doesn’t know--maybe he thinks Bucky’s--well, but Bucky had said they were only professionals, right? But that’s only because Steve had wanted them to be. He thinks. What if Steve thinks Bucky hates him? What if _Steve_ hates him? Still hates him.

Bucky’s thoughts start to get all curvy, loops and curlicues until he goes cross-eyed and starts laughing.

“Okay, Tony,” he says and pats Tony on the shoulder. “It’s not a bad idea. I’ll tell my f--boyfriend that he thinks he’s cute.”

“That you think he’s cute,” Tony corrects. “And I never have bad ideas!”

“Yeah!” Bucky says, hopping off the stool. “‘Swhat I said!”

“Okay, but you objectively didn’t!” Tony shouts after him, but Bucky leaves him behind, trying to wind through the press of bodies.

Tony isn’t right often, but he’s right now.

It’s important, Bucky thinks, that Steve knows that he thinks he’s cute. It’s very important that Steve knows that Bucky likes being his fake boyfriend. And it’s very important, Bucky thinks drunkenly, that Steve knows that Bucky wants to continue being his boyfriend. And that he wants to kiss him very, very badly.

He bumps into a few people, laughs, and then straightens himself.

He’s almost to Steve when someone touches his shoulder.

“Bucky Barnes!” a familiar voice says to him, loud and happy.

Bucky feels his chest grow even lighter, happier. He’s beaming as he turns around.

“T’Challa!” he exclaims, grinning, and embraces his old friend.

  
Steve has spent the last half an hour at the bar with Clint, letting Clint hold him hostage, because Clint won gold and Steve is a good friend, but also mostly because Clint is very good at talking and very bad at stopping.

Natasha appears at their elbows sometimes, making fun of Clint and knocking back shots of vodka, which honestly seems disgusting to Steve, but which she barely blinks at, and then she disappears and is replaced by someone else--Sam, sometimes, or Thor or a member of the biathlon team. Once, even _Loki_ comes to get a drink and Loki rarely talks to anyone who isn’t Thor and, sometimes, Erik, but Clint holds him hostage and forces him to drink _tequila_ and Steve by this time is a little drunk himself, so he slips off his stool and goes to pee.

He doesn’t know where the bathroom is, is one of the main problems, and there’s about a billion people in the bar with them, some of them winners, some of them losers, some of them just competitors. Steve gets stopped four or five times in his quest to relieve himself and he thinks it’s partially the alcohol and it’s partially the good performance, but he’s never felt so at ease in his own skin.

One women’s biathlon athlete named Kate Bishop stops Steve, a hand to his elbow.

“Steve Rogers, right?” she asks with a grin. “I’m Kate. U.S. team as well, but I don’t think we’ve met.”

“Oh, hey!” Steve says with a bright smile. “I’ve heard about you. Clint says no one can shoot near as well as you can. Well, other than him. Have you seen him? Has he shown you his gold?”

“Don’t talk to me about that gold,” Kate groans. “I’m never going to stop hearing about it. I’ve already threatened to throw it off a mountain five times, but he never takes me seriously.”

“You should threaten his like, pride,” Steve says earnestly. “Tell him his jokes aren’t funny.”

Kate snickers at that, hands covering her pretty mouth. Then she swipes back dark hair.

“Hey, I saw you and Barnes perform the other night,” she says with a smile. “I--gosh, I have to admit I didn’t think you two had it in you. You always look like you’re going to stab each other. Or, I guess, looked.”

That makes Steve straighten a little, glow with pride.

“It’s hard,” he says. “We were individuals skaters. And now we have to be a pair. I thought it was going to be easy.”

“It seems like a whole different competition,” Kate says and Steve nods in agreement. “Well, you and Barnes--you look good together, Steve. I hope you don’t mind me saying.”

How could he? Steve can’t stop the smile from breaking out across his face.

“Oh wow,” Kate says, eyes widening.

“What?” Steve says, self consciously. “What?”

“Okay, I really thought you two were faking it,” Kate says. “Like, for the Olympics or whatever. But--oh my god, look at your face!”

Steve touches his face. It’s warm, but he doesn’t think he has anything on it.

“What about my face?” Steve asks, patting it. “What?”

“You look like it’s Christmas come all over again,” Kate laughs. “Wait, let me try something.”

“What?” Steve asks again, feeling a little bit like a broken record. His head is a little mushy, he can feel the alcohol pulling at his edges. He really should have eaten more.

“Barnes,” Kate says, almost gleefully. There’s this mischievous grin on her face. “Bucky--there!”

Steve could lie and say he doesn’t know what she’s talking about, but he’s already eyeballs deep in lies at this point. His first and biggest lie is the entire reason his face is curving up like this anyway, why he can feel the smile on his lips, bright and stubborn. He knows, from Kate’s expression alone, that his eyes are bright too, that he looks hopelessly pleased, even smitten.

That might be because he _is_ hopelessly pleased, even smitten. It’s hard not to be, when Bucky looks at him the way he does, expression always honest and open, and touches him the way he does, firmly but carefully too, and they move together the way that they do on ice, like they’re two parts of the same whole. Sometimes they’ll come back to their room early from Village festivities and just stand on their little balcony and talk, for hours, until Steve’s cold and Bucky makes a face and drags them back inside. Bucky always presses close to him and Steve--he never once tries to move away.

When he leaps now, he doesn’t have to think twice. He knows that Bucky will catch him.

“Ugh,” Steve complains and Kate laughs.

“It’s nice,” she says softly and watches him as he looks around, almost unconsciously, for his partner. “I don’t know what it’s like to find someone who matches you like that, but it must be nice. When I see the two of you together, you fit.”

Steve knows he’s drunk, but he looks at his hands and feels the weight of her words stagger in his chest. They _fit_ is what she said. Steve’s never _fit_ anywhere before, or with anyone.

It makes no sense that he would find that with someone who he’s hated for so long.

But it also makes a perfect kind of sense.

Because now, months later, three sheets to the wind, Steve understands what his mother had seen in Bucky all of those years ago. Bucky wasn’t the villain Steve had built up in his mind, arrogant and mean, cutthroat, and looking out only for himself. Bucky had been so unlike Steve, so the opposite of Steve in every conceivable way, that Steve had let his natural competitiveness and his envy blind him to what everyone around them could see--that he and Bucky had been more similar than they had been different. In a way, the two of them had understood only each other all along.

It doesn’t make it easy though, to accept, that he could feel this way about Bucky Barnes. Steve is under no misconception about himself. He knows that he’s small for any age and pale and thin. He spends all of his time at the ice rink, he’s combative, he’s competitive, he’s reckless. He runs his mouth when he should keep quiet and he has a temper that gets him into trouble more often than it doesn’t. He’s sick a lot and never takes care of himself properly. Steve knows that he is by no means a catch. 

And in comparison, Bucky is--well, he’s stupidly handsome and he’s tall and he’s charming and he has a smile that makes both men and women go weak at the knees. He’s warm and he’s caring and he looks good in costume and in normal clothes and probably out of clothes altogether and he’s funny and he’s good at skating and Bucky Barnes could have any human being in the world, probably.

There’s no reason he should want someone like Steve.

And that thought puts a damper in his drunken spirits, because what’s the outcome of this then? What if Steve falls for Bucky? Bucky’s said in no uncertain terms, multiple times, that after all of this, he never wants to speak to Steve again.

And maybe they’ve been doing better, but Steve’s not in the habit of hearing yes when someone’s said no. He’s not going to presume Bucky’s changed his mind, just because Steve suddenly wants him to.

Steve looks around the bar, trying to see where Bucky is and trying not to feel the way he does, like here he is in a bar of hundreds of people who want to talk to him and all he really wants is to take Bucky’s hand and lead him back to the rink.

He doesn’t even want to practice with him, is the thing. He just wants to hold his hand and skate.

Oh god.

It hits him in the way that most things do when you’re on the verge of epiphany and drunk to boot.  

Steve knows that Bucky never wants to speak to him again, that this is all professional and once they’re done at the Olympics they’re done forever. And maybe they’ll go back to being rivals on ice or maybe they’ll manage to forge some kind of polite friendship instead. And maybe, at some point in time, that would have been more than enough.

Once, before all of this happened and Steve had realized that Bucky Barnes was not only a decent guy, but kind of one of the best. A guy who would pretend to be a fake boyfriend with someone he hates to make sure they both achieved their dreams; a guy who would hold someone while they fell apart on the floor of a studio; a guy who would make sure no one was eating anything with nuts around you because he remembers the one time, days ago, when a scanner said you were deathly allergic to them; a guy who would never let you fall, no matter how unexpected your jump.

But it’s not good enough for Steve anymore, because he realizes that he _does_ want that. He does want to hold Bucky’s hand as they skate around the rink, not at the Olympics, not at Worlds, but at Bryant Park during Christmas, when the city is dark and twinkling around them and there’s snow falling into their hair. He wants to stand in the middle of the Rockefeller ice rink, looking up at the flags and the giant Christmas tree on a cold winter night, Bucky’s scarf wrapped around his neck, Bucky laughing at something he’s said, while they do a loop around all of the other skaters and pretend not to be Olympic athletes or figure skaters, but just two guys, holding hands, and drifting across the ice.

He wants to take Bucky’s face in his hands and kiss him in the middle of the rink, faces pink from the wind and happy from each other.

Skating is Steve’s love language. And he wants to skate with Bucky Barnes.

“You look like a guy who just realized he’s in love,” Kate says softly.

It punches the breath out of him.

Steve had forgotten she was there at all. He looks up at her and she’s smiling at him and he smiles back at her, so it’s strange, so very strange, that it feels like at the very moment everything suddenly makes sense, he feels so desperately sad too.

  
Steve doesn’t know what to do with his thoughts or his feelings and he doesn’t get a chance to find out.

“You should tell him,” Kate says with a warm smile. “When you love someone, you should tell them. You have to take the opportunity when you still have it.”

What she’s said aches in him in a keen way. He knows all too well about losing opportunities, and losing people.

He thinks maybe he _should_ find Bucky and tell him how he feels, before he loses him too.

Kate wishes him luck and Steve vibrates a little, from nerves, or the magnitude of what he’s feeling. He tries to cut through the crowd, but there’s too many people and he gets shoved between one athlete and the next. He finds himself sandwiched between Pietro Maximoff and another Sokovian with brown hair who he doesn’t recognize.

“I do not worry, they have had a good short program, but it was all luck. Wanda and I are unstoppable together,” Pietro says.

“I do not think she is doing for you what Rogers is doing for Barnes,” the other man snickers.

Steve freezes, hearing their names.

Pietro shoves him and the man laughs more, loud and drunk.

“You are a donkey. Wait, is that Barnes?” Pietro asks his compatriot.

Steve tries to look toward where Pietro is looking, his heart lurching in his chest despite himself. There are too many people in between them.

“Yes,” the brown-haired man says. “I believe so. That kind of arrogance is easy to spot and hard to fake.”

Pietro ignores him and asks, “With T’Challa? What is that about?”

Steve is craning his neck to try and find Bucky, but stops suddenly. A wave of uneasiness washes over him. He doesn’t like Pietro’s tone.

“Did you not hear?” the brown-haired man says. He leans closer to Pietro conspiratorially, but it’s still loud enough for Steve to hear. “Between you and me, they were together, once. After Worlds last year.”

Oh.

“Once as in one time or once as in once upon a time?” Pietro asks.

_Oh._

“Maybe one or the other,” his friend says and then leans back. “Maybe both, who knows? It seems they are friendly, no? They must be back together. Or sampling each other, as it were.”

“I thought he was dating Rogers,” Pietro frowns.

“It is Olympic Village,” his friend says and takes a sip of his beer. “Why settle for an appetizer when you can have a main course?”

Pietro laughs like his friend has said the funniest thing he has ever heard. He claps the other man on his shoulder and leans in to say something else, but Steve has heard enough.

He had already been teetering on the edge, caught between the enormity of what he’s feeling now and what he used to feel and what he wants to feel. This--it shouldn’t surprise him. And it doesn’t, in a way.

It makes sense that Bucky and T’Challa would be together. It makes sense that they would have a history and that history would lead to something now, in the middle of the biggest event of their lives. T’Challa was handsome and strong and regal, a prince of Wakanda, beautiful on the ice and off of it. They had met before in competition, countless times. T’Challa was the consummate professional and Bucky values that. Steve had been gone for two years and Bucky had spent all of that time _hating_ him. He had come back and all he and Bucky had done was fight.

So of course it makes sense.

It doesn’t stop his heart from breaking any less, though.

  
As if hearing the sound of reality crashing into him, the crowd parts enough for Steve to see them. A person moves and there they are, in the space in between, Bucky glowing with happiness and T’Challa smiling, his arms around Bucky.

It’s obvious that they’re pleased to see each other. It’s undeniable that they’re beautiful together, two pieces of an absurdly gorgeous puzzle.

Steve was stupid to think he fit with Bucky, when he has never fit with anyone, anywhere.

“Stupid,” he gasps and reels back. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.”

Steve stumbles, his heart hammering, his feelings a broken mess around him. His mind screams for him to get out, to _leave._

He tries to push through the crowd, but the bodies are so thick, he can only bump into people’s elbows. He barely comes up to shoulders, he’s so short, and it’s never frustrated him before, but it does frustrate him now. He just wants to get out.

“Steve?” he thinks he hears a voice, but he ignores it.

He just wants to _leave_ with what remains of his tattered heart.

“Stupid,” he gasps out as he finally makes his way through an empty pocket. He shoves past a group of women and bursts out the front door.

He makes it to the corner of the building before he sinks down to his knees, hands in his hair, breath coming up short.

“Stupid,” he repeats and realizes his face is wet. “Stupid, stupid, stupid.” 

“Oh, Steve,” someone says and it’s not Kate this time, but Sam. Steve doesn’t know when he followed him or why and frankly he doesn’t care.

“Sam,” Steve gasps, his chest aching. “I’m so stupid. I’m so fucking stupid.”

“Steve, talk to me,” Sam says and moves closer. He crouches next to him. “Don’t shut me out this time. Please, talk to me.”

Steve doesn’t know how to talk or what to say, how to explain this stupid, completely avoidable situation he’s gotten himself into, but he also know that Sam won’t care. Sam’s seen Steve through worse and he hasn’t left him yet.

So Steve doesn’t know where to start, but he does anyway, and Sam just listens, like the good best friend he is, lets Steve fall apart, and holds him tight as he does.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :( I'm sorry. I warned you about the dumb.


	11. ten. (pairs practice)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In which boys are dumb, Fury's definitely considering a new career, and Sam Wilson is the best goddamned friend a person could have.

Bucky thinks he sees a flash of blond hair through the crush of the crowd. It shouldn’t be recognizable, blond hair, but it is, because Bucky has obsessively watched that blond hair since he was a kid.

He gets that now.

T’Challa smiles at him and embraces him and Bucky, who had once had the most hideous crush on the literal prince of Wakanda, feels nothing but the warmth of friendship.

T’Challa doesn’t make his stomach swoop with nerves anymore.

There’s only one head of blond hair that does that.

So Bucky sees him and his stomach swoops and he beams and he must be really obvious, because T’Challa laughs at him and shoves his shoulder.

“Go find your boy,” he says, as though he knows exactly what’s going through Bucky’s head.

“Okay,” Bucky says happily.

He likes the way that sounds.

_Your boy._

Bucky chases after Steve, the way he’s always chasing after Steve.

He gets that now too. He had been confused before, had interpreted hate when it had been something else.

He had never hated Steve, he had just hated that Steve hated him.

“Steve!” Bucky calls, but Steve disappears into the crowd.

Bucky frowns, his heart thudding fast and slow near his ribcage. He’s suddenly too drunk for this, the mass of bodies, the heat and the noise. He just wants to be back in their room, with Steve, on the balcony talking, which other than skating, has been Bucky’s favorite part of the entire Olympics.

Bucky gets pulled to the side before he can reach the door by Pietro Maximoff.

“Barnes!” the Sokovian says and Bucky is just drunk enough to let him distract him.

When he finally manages to ditch Pietro and push through the crowd and get back outside, Steve is gone.

Bucky fumbles with his phone and calls him, needing, desperately, in this moment, to hear his voice.

Steve doesn’t pick up. Bucky frowns, disappointed.

When Bucky gets back to the room, finally, he’s already asleep.

Bucky slumps heavily down onto his bed and feels a familiar anxiety ticking near the back of his skull. Something feels wrong, but he doesn’t know what. Or why.

  
Bucky can’t shake the feeling that Steve is avoiding him the next morning. He wakes up and rolls over, ready to see Steve and greet him, wake him up like he’s gotten used to, but he’s already gone from his bed. He tries to catch him for breakfast, but he won’t pick up his phone. He asks Natasha if she’s seen him and she says no and he asks Sam where he is and he’s vague.

Something feels off in a way it hadn’t the day before.

He tells himself he’s reading too much into nothing, but it messes with his head, despite himself. By the time Bucky gets to practice, his anxiety is so high that his skin is crawling with it.

He sits on one of the benches in the locker room and tries to breathe.

He’s in the middle of taking a breath, his fingers curled around the edge of the bench, when he sees Steve come out of the changing area, practice clothes on.

“Steve!” Bucky calls.

For one horrifying moment, he thinks Steve is going to ignore him here too, but to Bucky’s relief, he doesn’t.

“Hey, Bucky,” Steve says, pausing in the doorway.

“You—where—“” Bucky tries to slow his breathing. “I missed you this morning.”

Steve pauses at that too. Bucky can almost feel it on his skin, how awkward the moment is.

He can’t figure out why.

“I woke up early,” Steve says. He sounds distant. “Didn’t want to disturb you.”

“I tried to call you,” Bucky says.

“Phone’s dead,” Steve says. “Sorry.”

It’s so unlike him that Bucky can feel it in the pit of his stomach, that something’s wrong here. Something’s happened and Bucky doesn’t know what and he’s almost desperate to try to fix it.

“You disappeared last night,” Bucky tries again. “I tried to find you and you were gone. Why didn’t you tell me? I would have come with you.”

Steve shrugs. It’s so noncommittal it almost drives Bucky crazy. He clenches his jaw.

“Are you mad at me?” Bucky asks then. “What did I—”

“Bucky, don’t,” Steve says suddenly.

“What?” Bucky looks at him in confusion, gripped by an unrelenting fear.

“Please, we don’t have to do this.”

“Do what?” Bucky asks. “Steve, what’s going on?”

Steve looks so uncomfortable it nearly drives Bucky out of his skin. He runs a hand through his hair, messes it up even more than usual. Normally Bucky would admire that, file it away as something Steve does that he’s learning he loves about him. This morning, it just makes him more anxious.

“Listen,” Steve says and his voice is quiet. It’s not angry, which is a good thing, but it’s not normal either. It sounds distant, cold even, maybe even resigned. “I knew what we were getting into. You told me, you warned me—and I get it. We’re professionals, nothing else. We do this thing and we get our medal and then we can go back to hating each other. We never have to talk to each other again, you don’t have to pretend or lie anymore.”

Bucky stares at him.

“It means nothing to me either,” Steve says. “It’s okay.”

It hits him like a truck would, just absolutely batters him.

“It means nothing to you?” he asks hollowly, over the sound of his heart cracking.

“Yeah,” Steve says. “We’re just here to skate. And that’s okay. We don’t have to make it more than it is.”

Bucky doesn’t know how Steve found out, but he’s—mortified he did now. Heartbroken.

“Maybe we can try to be friends.”

Angry.

Absolutely, horribly livid.

“Fuck you,” Bucky says furiously.

“What?” Steve looks taken aback.

“Fuck. _You_ ,” Bucky says. He gets up from the bench, shaking.

Of all the ways he thought it would go—if Steve found out, when Bucky told him--he never imagined it would be like _this_. He never thought Steve would be so callous, bruising his heart with little care. Humiliating him in the process.

“Fine,” Steve says, his voice turning cold. “We don’t have to be friends.”

“You think I want to be friends with you after _that_?” Bucky seethes. “You know, if you don’t want—if you can’t return—you know what, whatever. But fuck you, I deserve better than this.”

A crease appears between Steve’s eyebrows.

“What?”

“After _everything_ , you think you can just—” Bucky swallows, blood pounding against his ears. “I told you things. I shared things with you I didn’t tell _anyone_ else and you—”

He can’t even finish his sentence.

“I’m not going to tell anyone,” Steve says, annoyed. As though Bucky is so _inconveniencing_ him by feeling hurt. “If that’s what you’re worried about.”

“Fuck you, Steve Rogers,” Bucky pronounces again, shaking. “I was right about you the first time. You’re a dick and a coward.”

Bucky rolls his hands into fists, he’s so furious and simultaneously hurt, and spits out, “I regret ever meeting you.”

Considering Steve did this to them—to _him_ , it’s not right that he looks like Bucky just slapped him across the face. He looks, for a second, like he’s reeling from the impact of Bucky’s words.

A coward _and_ a liar.

“Whatever,” Steve spits back. “ _Whatever_.”

Whatever goodwill there was between them, whatever feelings, whatever _thing_ they had been building shatters, just like that, leaving behind nothing but resentment and that familiar old hostility.

Bucky’s so fucking furious he could break Steve’s nose and still not be satisfied.

He has to almost physically remind himself, amidst his spinning head, that he still needs Steve. Professionally. That they still need to finish this one last thing.

“Don’t speak to me,” Bucky hisses, shoving past him. “Never speak to me again.”

  
Steve watches Bucky go and he can’t quite process what’s happened or what he’s said. He knows, logically, the words that came out of his mouth and even what they meant. He doesn’t know anymore, however, if whether it was right to say them.

He had thought he was protecting himself, his heart, by telling Bucky what he wanted to hear. He hadn’t said anything that Bucky hadn’t set up for him to say.

But he hadn’t expected it to hurt as much as it did as he was saying it. He hadn’t expect his throat to burn or for Bucky to look as hurt as he did.

Steve looks down at his palms and thinks how unfair it is, that he can’t have the person he loves in the way he wants and that now he can’t have him at all.

It was unmistakable, this time, the look that settled in Bucky’s eyes. It wasn’t confusion or rivalry or even hurt.

It was pure, unadulterated hatred.

Steve had been trying to protect his heart from getting broken by Bucky, only to end up breaking it himself.

**

The practice is one of the worst they’ve ever had. Everything is eerily quiet between the two of them, tense and awkward, Bucky steaming, and Steve quietly nursing his broken heart.

It’s as disconnected and cold as their short program had been warm and full of chemistry.

Steve can’t focus and Bucky tries not to touch him. It’s difficult when you’re skating as a pair. Touching is one of the definite prerequisites.

Steve is too heartsick to feel bad and Bucky’s face is less a mask and more an open palette of disgust. It’s worse than before. Now it’s a tangible, obvious thing. Now, it’s been spoken out loud.

He thinks about apologizing, taking back what he said, just to make Bucky stop shaking every time their skates take them close to each other, but he doesn’t know how to say it or even if that’s okay. He doesn’t know _what_ he would say.Maybe Steve was lying through his teeth about his own feelings, but it’s nothing Bucky didn’t want to hear.

Maybe it’s better this way, he thinks and misses his cue to jump.

“What’s wrong with the two of you?” Fury asks with a threatening glower. Neither of them can answer. “Whatever. Leave your drama at the door. When you come here, you skate or stop wasting my goddamn time.”

They hang their heads and try their combination again. Bucky touches Steve this time, but it’s so forceful that Steve fumbles his hand and goes skidding onto his knees.

He hisses, the ice biting into the palm of his hands, cold, his knees bursting into pain as it slams into the ground.

“Fuck,” Bucky mutters just as Fury shouts, “ _Enough!_ ”

Bucky goes to help Steve up, but Steve, frustrated and physically hurt and a little ill from everything, shoves him away. Bucky looks hurt and Steve feels hurt and Jesus Christ, it’s all the biggest fucking mess.

He should have kept his fucking mouth shut.

He should have let Bucky continue to pretend with him and then go fuck T’Challa and sure Steve would have been devastated, but at least he wouldn’t have ruined their Olympic dreams.

Steve lifts his cold, smarting hands and presses his palms into his eyes.

“Whatever’s going on with you two, _fix it_ ,” Fury barks at them. “I don’t care what happened or who did it, I don’t care what you have to do to fix it, but by God if you ruin your fucking long program because of whatever drama you’re currently suffering through, I will make sure neither of you is ever called up for the national team again, see if I won’t.”

Fury is so angry at them that his eye nearly eviscerates them on the spot. He turns on his skates and glides over to the other side of the rink, where Coulson is taking notes.

Steve pushes himself up this time, swaying on his skates. For a terrifying moment he thinks he’s going to collapse onto his knees again, he feels so drained and miserable.

“Don’t fuck this up for us,” Bucky says coldly. His body is rigid, the fury frozen into his eyes. “You owe me at least that.”

“It takes two, Bucky,” Steve says tiredly.

“Funny,” Bucky gives him a withering look. “That you seem to remember that now.”

Steve doesn’t know what to say to that.

“It doesn’t have to be this way,” he says softly.

“What way?” Bucky asks, cold. “You made it this way.”

“We can still be partners,” Steve tries again.

“Only on ice, right?” Bucky crosses his arms across his chest and skates around him. “I heard you the first time. Professionals only. I fucking get it Steve. You just want me to help you win gold.”

Steve follows his movement with his eyes.

“That’s not what I—”

“I know what you said,” Bucky says harshly, stopping suddenly. “ _You_ know what you said. You can’t change what you meant now just because you don’t like what happened.”

Steve swallows.

“You’re a dick,” Bucky says again. Steve thinks he’s heard it from him a dozen times by now, but this time it really stings. “But you were right. It means nothing to me. So congratulations, I guess. You won again.”

Steve—he set himself up for that one. He suspected it was true, knew it even, but hearing Bucky say it out loud is like a blow to the chest he wasn’t expecting. Holding out hope is the most painful act of futility.

He can’t stagger on the ice, but the force of Bucky’s words make him feel like he does.

It hurts, but at least he knows now, for sure, that he made the right choice.

“Okay, Buck,” Steve says quietly, trying to keep from sounding as upset as he feels. “I’ll see you later.”

He skates backwards, away from Bucky, then turns around so he doesn’t have to see him. It’s only because of this that he doesn’t see the way that Bucky’s face crumbles, his eyes shining bright with devastation, like this thing, this one thing, Steve calling him _Buck_ , is the thing that crushes him entirely.

**

Bucky staggers from the training arena feeling so defeated that he nearly sinks to his knees from the exhaustion of it. He carries Steve’s words with him, close enough to the chest to stab him every time he inhales. If Steve had even hated him, he thinks he could have tolerated it. But this—feeling nothing for him at all, despite what Bucky’s told him, despite what they’ve been through, that’s designed to hurt him in ways that he’s only starting to understand.

Isn’t that what depression feels like anyway? Like nothing in the world matters and no one could possibly care if you stay or go.

Bucky’s not used to actively wanting that, to pinning his hopes on a specific person and needing _them_ to care. But he had chosen Steve, or his heart had, and Steve hadn’t cared at all.

“Fuck,” Bucky says, feeling his breath come up short. He tries to take a breath and the air doesn’t quite make it into his lungs. His heart rate picks up, painfully.

He fumbles for his phone and calls Natasha.

“Nat,” he says the second she picks up. He presses his palm against his eyes and is surprised to find that it’s wet. “It’s happening again.”

“Stay there,” Natasha says immediately.

She hangs up the phone and Bucky stumbles to the edge of the sidewalk and sits down heavily on the curb.

He brings his knees up and presses his face down and tries to force air into his lungs, until she shows up.

**

Steve doesn’t know what to do or where to go, except that it can’t be the room he shares with Bucky and it can’t be anywhere else they might run into each other. So he goes to the only place he can think of—the hockey arena.

Sam is in the middle of practice, but there’s something comforting about watching him and his team on ice, yelling at each other, trying to get this small puck in between large, very clothed bodies. Steve takes a seat on one of the benches near the front and watches them, drifting in and out of his own thoughts.

There’s something soothing about hockey that’s different from figure skating. Maybe this is why people watch it. There’s more yelling and more blood-pounding action, but there’s multiple people spread out across the ice, each tasked with a specific thing to do, the whole working toward this one goal of scoring. It’s strategic and rhythmic, in a way.

It lets Steve watch and not watch, ignore the hurt in his chest the lower it goes.

Steve’s never been in love before.

He’s never had the opportunity. He was always too busy or too small or too not conventionally handsome. He had skating and he had his mom, who was sick, or he was sick, and what time he had left over, he had Sam, who was his best friend. Steve’s never been particularly good at time management, but for his entire life, these were the people in it, the parts that were contained in his very small sphere.

And then Bucky had come crashing into it, or he had gone crashing into Bucky’s, and Steve’s sphere grew, naturally, opened to let this person in, like it had been waiting all along to do so. Bucky’s beautiful and he’s kind and when Steve is with him on ice, it feels a little less devastating, a little less overwhelming, that he’s still here but his mother is gone.

Steve’s never felt that before, has never had someone to help him lighten the load.

It terrifies him.

And it’s not Bucky’s fault, not really, that he doesn’t love Steve back. It was Steve’s stupid mistake to begin with. Bucky’s never been anything less than completely honest about what he expects out of this arrangement and just because he had been charming and kind and even affectionate doesn’t mean he had wanted or expected anything more.

Steve doesn’t realize the rink’s gone quiet until he hears a single pair of skates coming toward him. Then Sam takes off his helmet, shrugs out of his jersey, and comes and sits down next to Steve.

“Hey,” he says.

“Hey,” Steve manages back, quietly.

“You been here a while,” Sam says. “I tried to yell at you a few times, but you weren’t...really responsive.”

“Oh,” Steve says. He takes a breath and tries to dislodge himself from his thoughts. “Yeah.”

Sam nudges him with his shoulder.

“What’s up?”

Steve doesn’t know how to put into words what he’s done. What Bucky’s said. The entire fucking mess that they’ve ended up in.

“Bucky and I, we—” he stares at his shoes. “—broke up.”

Sam doesn’t say anything for a second.

“What happened?” he asks.

Steve’s throat tightens. It hurts dully, in his chest, in his stomach, even in his arms.

“Did you tell him?” Sam says quietly. And then again, “What happened?”

Steve has a flash of the night before, Sam’s arms around him, Steve’s face pressed into his chest.

 _You can’t go on like this, Steve_ , Sam had said. _It’s killing you and it’s killing me to see it kill you. You gotta take a chance on someone. Take a chance on Barnes. Tell him how you feel_.

“I didn’t want to—” Steve swallows. “I couldn’t do it.”

Sam inhales, a little sharply, but then lets the breath out.

“Why not?” he  asks. He’s not judgmental or even mean about it. It’s the reason Steve’s never been able to keep a secret from him.

Steve swings his legs, just to do something, just to distract himself from the stone in his chest.

“It’s not just feelings,” Steve says.

Sam waits.

“I think I’m in love with him, Sam,” Steve whispers. “I’ve never been in love with someone before.”

Sam nods. Then he turns, clasping a hand tightly to Steve’s shoulder.

“Steve,” Sam says. “Being in love is—it’s not easy. I get that. I _know_ that. It’s difficult and overwhelming. It’s scary, caring about someone else that much. You put your whole heart into someone else’s hands and that’s fucking terrifying.”

Steve nods shakily.

“You’ve never had to do that before so I get why you’re freaked out. But.”

“But?” Steve stares at Sam, a little adrift, unmoored.

“You’ve put your whole life into figure skating,” Sam says. “And it’s worked out for you so far. But one day, you’re going to need something else. Skating will always be there in your heart and all, but it won’t always _be_ there, not in the way you’re gonna need. Sometime soon, you’re going to need someone else. And even if it’s not Barnes, it’s going to be someone.”

Steve feels miserable.

“I don’t want it to be someone else,” he says.

“I know that, dummy,” Sam says with half a smile. “Anyone with half a brain cell knows that.”

Steve’s throat burns and Sam softens.

“You and Barnes are good together,” he says. “I think if you got out of your head for two seconds, you’d know that.”

“It’s all fake, Sam,” Steve says miserably. “None of it is real—”

“Bullshit,” Sam says. He looks a little mad this time. “Don’t you lie to me, Steve Rogers. Not to _me_ . I have been here with you since we were fucking kids and I have put up with a _lot_ of your dumb shit and I’m happy to do it—I love you, man. But don’t you dare lie to me.”

Steve isn’t in the habit of crying, but he feels like he might, now.

“What did you do? Tell me the truth.”

Steve inhales shakily. Then he exhales and it sounds wet.

“I told him it meant nothing to me,” Steve says and this time he does feel something wet on his face. “I know it was a shitty thing to say, but I didn’t want him to say it first. I didn’t want him to—hurt me. I was scared to hear him say it wasn’t enough, that _I_ wasn’t enough. So I said it first and then he said it and I don’t know what I believe except I know he hates me.”

The silence between them is pronounced, for one terrible, awkward second.

Then Sam sighs.

“Steve, I love you, but my God, you’re a complete idiot,” Sam says. It’s Sam, so it’s not hard, but it’s not gentle, it’s just right. “You know that, right? You’re just the biggest moron.”

Despite himself, Steve laughs a little. Sam always finds a way to make him laugh.

“God, you drive me crazy!” Sam says with a huffed breath.

“You don’t have to be mean about it,” Steve mutters.

“No, seriously,” Sam says seriously. “You drive me insane. Steve, I’m going to spit some truth on you. You ready?”

“No,” Steve says, making a face.

“Too bad,” Sam Wilson says. “Here it is. You, Steve Rogers, are a crazy, reckless, impulsive, ridiculous son of a bitch. You get in your head about _nothing_. You self-sabotage constantly because you don’t think people care or you don’t think people could, I don’t know. You don’t give people a chance to be good to you, Steve. I don’t know if it’s because you don’t think you deserve it or you don’t trust people, but it’s not fair to them and it’s _not_ fair to you. You think I haven’t seen you do it before? You only trust yourself and sometimes me and that might have been okay when you were a kid and your whole world was skating and your mom, but—”

Sam softens here. Steve’s heart beats faster in his chest.

“I know she was your whole world and that’s okay. But she’s gone now and you have to—pick up the pieces. You have to create a whole world for yourself now,” Sam says. “It’s not going to be easy. It’s never easy. But you do it because you have to and because you deserve good things. And Barnes is a good thing, for you. You two have always made each other better, even if you were too stubborn to realize or admit it. Honestly, it makes perfect sense to everyone with a single brain cell that you two would end up falling for each other.”

“Really?” Steve croaks. “Wait, each other?”

“Nat and I sometimes grab drinks and I swear to god we have said for _years_ it’s only a matter of goddamned time—” Sam says, getting heated.

“Wait, you what?”

“And now that it’s _finally_ the goddamned time, you are doing your goddamned best to ruin this for us!”

“For us?” Steve blinks.

Sam grabs Steve’s shoulders and shakes them.

“Let my best friend be happy, you self-sabotaging son of a bitch!” he says. “Give him this!”

Steve feels like he’s shaking even after Sam stops. He thinks—no, he thinks too much. That’s part of the problem. He listens instead, really hears what Sam has to say and maybe it’s stupid, maybe it’s too hopeful, but he thinks—no, he _believes_ , that, maybe this time, Sam might be right.

“What if he doesn’t love me, Sam?” Steve asks quietly. “What if it _was_ all fake? What if...he breaks my heart?”

Sam slows his movements, looks Steve right in the eyes.

“Then you have a broken heart,” Sam says, equally quiet. “And you deal with that then too. But you can’t break your heart for him, Steve. You have to give Bucky a chance to do right by you. And you have to do right by him. Do you think you’ve done that?”

Steve doesn’t have to think this time. He shakes his head no.

“Tell him how you feel,” Sam says and then, warningly, adds, “For real this time. No bullshit. No excuses.”

“What if he doesn’t want to hear it?” Steve says tremulously. “Now that I’ve fucked everything up?”

“Make him,” Sam says, easy as that. “Grab him by his goddamned shoulders and make him hear you.”

Sam is—honestly, the best friend Steve could ever possibly ask for. He’s right. He’s been with him since the beginning, through everything, shored Steve up through his lows, and held him up through his highs. And if Sam says he’s strong enough to get through this, no matter what Bucky says, then, well, Steve will trust him.

Because if he trusts no one else, if he doesn’t even trust himself—Steve Rogers trusts Sam Wilson.

  
“Okay,” Steve says, letting out a low, low breath. “I’ll make Bucky hear me.”

“That’s what I’m talking about!” Sam says with a grin. He squeezes Steve’s shoulder and Seve feels a bit dizzy, a bit like everything is shifting under his feet, again.

This might be a mistake. It might go completely, terribly wrong. Bucky really might hate him, or worse, he might not care about him at all, one way or another. Steve might shatter what’s left of his heart. But sometimes, the things worth having were the things worth risking everything for.

Sometimes, you just had to take a leap, and hope your partner was there to catch you when you landed.


	12. eleven. (women's short program)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Look at that chapter count--we're winding down here! I miscounted and there will be 14 chapters, not 15. :( But that's okay! This is the One--the chapter you have been waiting for. You've earned this chapter, dear readers; we've all earned this chapter. 
> 
> I'll have one last chapter for you guys tomorrow + the epilogue. Thanks so much for reading and commenting, I've had a blast yelling with you guys about how dumb! These boys are!

Natasha finds Bucky hyperventilating on the curb. She puts her palm against his cheek, kisses his forehead, and says, “Up, James.”

Bucky follows her like a robot, chest tight, breathing difficult.

“Follow my breathing,” she says, like she’s done so many times before, before competitions, after competitions, following Nagoya. She knows how to calm his panic attacks now, how to knock him out of his own, anxious head long enough for him to come back down. He follows her lead, trusts her with his life. One breath, after another breath, after another, until finally oxygen tumbles through his lungs easier.

“Tell me what happened, lastachka,” Natasha says. She runs a hand through his hair and tips his chin up so he looks at her. “Tell me how I can help.”

He does.

  
Bucky doesn’t remember the next hour very well. He knows that Natasha has to compete soon, that he apologizes to her a hundred times over, and that she tells him to stop at some point, so sharply, so angrily, that he stops breathing altogether.

“If you think skating is more important than my best friend’s well-being, then you don’t know me at all,” Natasha says and her eyes glitter so dangerously that Bucky doesn’t even try to apologize again. 

They walk and they talk.

Bucky explains to her what Steve said, what he said, how they’re wrapped up in this tangled, awful mess and how Bucky is so fucking mad and so fucking hurt and what sucks the most is that despite it all, despite how Steve had broken his _entire heart_ , he still just wants to find him and take his face between his hands, and beg him to reconsider. Bucky hadn’t known you could still miss someone who devastated you, but he does; he misses Steve like he would miss his own limb.

“I’m going to kill him,” Natasha mutters under her breath. She looks over at Bucky. “I’m going to kill you both.”

“I’m so fucked up, Nat,” Bucky says miserably, not hearing the second part. “I don’t know how I let this happen.”

“Let what happen?” Natasha asks. “Falling in love? I don’t think you have a say in that.”

“How would you know?” Bucky asks and Natasha looks away.

“I know,” she says after a beat.

That makes Bucky pause, but Natasha redirects the conversation back toward him immediately.

“What would you do?” she asks. “In a perfect world. What would you want?”

Bucky sticks his hands in his jacket pocket, feeling so low he could sink into the ground.

“Gold,” he says automatically.

“Besides that, you idiot,” Natasha says, unimpressed. “What would you want out of you and Steve?”

Bucky knows what she meant, but it doesn’t make it any easier to answer. It feels sticky in his throat, heavy, an anchor weighing him down, what he knows he wants and what he’s gotten instead.

“I like skating with him,” Bucky says finally, softly. “When we’re on the ice together--it feels good. It feels _right_. I’ve been an individual’s skater my entire life, but...if he would say yes, I’d want to keep skating with him.”

This truth--this admission, it knocks something out of him. His life’s pride has been his own skating, this one thing he does by himself, for himself. To give that up, to _want_ to share that with someone is paramount to--well, something. Something enormous.

“And?” Natasha asks.

“And,” Bucky swallows. Then he sighs and looks up at the sky. “And I’d want something more. I’d want to do all of those things with him that you do with the person you--”

He stops and Natasha stops with him. She turns toward him and he knows then, he can’t escape this.

“James,” Natasha says softly. “Tell me the truth. Do you love him?”

Bucky shakes his head. Then he presses his palms to his eyes, grinds them in.

Natasha curses lightly, in Russian. Then she tugs his hands away.

“Look at me,” she says. “I think you and Rogers have two choices.”

Bucky looks at her. “What?”

“You can either continue pretending or you can both apologize and confess to being spectacular idiots,” Natasha says.

Bucky looks at her in confusion.

“What?”

“Tell me you believe him,” Natasha says, voice hard. “Look me, your best friend, in the eyes and tell me that you believe what he said to you. That what you have means _nothing_ to him.”

“He said it, Nat,” Bucky whispers, because that’s the easiest answer to give.

“I know that,” Natasha says. Then, gentler. “I know that, James. And it was wrong of him. It was absolutely wrong. But can you look at me and tell me that, knowing Steve as you do, skating with him as you have, that you think you’ve made up everything in your head? Can you honestly think about everything you two have done and believe that Steve Rogers, who is the most self-destructive and dramatic person we all know, who has more feelings than probably exists on the human spectrum--can you really tell me that _that_ Steve Rogers felt nothing for the two of you?”

The crushing thing about hope is that even when you try to ignore it, even when you don’t want it, it still finds a way to take root.

It’s in his chest, that bright tendril of light, creeping from that place in his heart he keeps all of the good and bad things in his life and spreading out. He doesn’t want to believe Natasha. He wants to protect his heart, want to push Steve away, because Steve did this, Steve _hurt_ him.

But if he takes a moment to get out of his head, to push aside his own walls and his own anxious thoughts and depressive feelings, he knows she’s right.

Steve can say whatever he wants, and the idiot says a _whole fucking lot_ , he can even fake a relationship with Bucky for the cameras, but he can’t fake what they have on ice. He can’t fake the spark Bucky feels between them every time their hands touch, or when Bucky’s hands are around Steve’s waist, or when Bucky lifts Steve into the air and both of them spin, glide across ice like they were born to it. He can’t fake the way they know how to anticipate each other’s needs or the sheer joy and heart-thumping exhilaration they both feel when they’re out there, doing this thing they love, and doing it together.

Steve can’t fake the way he looks at Bucky or the way Bucky knows he looks at him, no matter how good an actor he is.

It feels like the ground shifts under his feet and when he looks up at Natasha again, his throat is tight and his eyes wet.

The fact is that he’s known Steve his entire life and Steve’s known him his entire life too. And no matter how much they pretend, no matter how many times they fight, they keep going around each other, around and around, a spiral on land and on ice. It only makes sense they would do that with their hearts too.

“I love it when you realize I’m right,” Natasha says with a half-smile.

“You’re the most annoying person I know,” Bucky says with a shaky laugh, but he can’t help but pull Natasha in for a hug that she tolerates more than anything else.

“You two are the biggest morons I know,” Natasha says with a sigh.

Bucky pulls back.

“Am I stupid for this, Nat?” he asks. “Am I crazy to think maybe Steve does give a shit about me?”

“I don’t know, James,” Natasha complains. “Why don’t you ask _him_?”

Bucky’s scared. He’s terrified to ask Steve anything, let alone about what’s in his heart. But he’s also scared to not ask him, to let everything go unsaid that should be said.

He’s spent one too many nights on a balcony under the Wakandan sky, wanting desperately to kiss Steve, to not see if he has a real shot to do so.

“Nat,” Bucky says.

“What?” Natasha looks at him, wary.

“Are you going to tell Clint you love him?” Bucky asks point-blank.

“Get off me!” Natasha cries and tries to knee him. “You’re such a pain in my ass!”

For the first time in a full day, Bucky smiles.

**

The thing about the Olympics is that the best way to deal with heartbreak, on ice and off ice, is to watch someone else perform.

Sam changes and the two of them take the shuttle to the figure skating arena. They’re early, because they want to catch Natasha before she gets shuffled in to warm up before her program. They sneak in through the athlete’s entrance and catch her in the hallway, just as she’s about to go to the locker room to change.

“Our girl!” Sam says and wraps Natasha in a hug that she grunts into.

“How did you two miscreants sneak back here?” she asks. “This entire place is designed to kick out unwanted visitors.”

“I know you don’t mean that,” Sam says with a grin. “Sam Wilson has never been unwanted in his life.”

“I grew up in the Russian equivalent of the KGB,” Natasha says, deadpan. “They had me trained in ballet, thirteen hours a day, no breaks, very little food, so that I could turn out to be a spy for the Russian government. Being wanted is a childish myth.”

“And you turned to figure skating instead?” Sam raises an eyebrow.

“Who said anything about instead?” Natasha matches his eyebrow.

“Man, shut up,” Sam rolls his eyes. “We all know you grew up near Brighton Beach.”

“Nat,” Steve says. Natasha, who’s been preoccupied with Sam, turns her hawk-like gaze on Steve. She doesn’t look angry, but she doesn’t look very impressed by him.

“Steven,” she says.

“Ouch,” Sam mutters under his breath.

“You hurt my best friend, Steven,” Natasha says, eyes glinting dangerously.

Steve winces.

“I know, Nat,” he says, swallowing. “I know--I’m sorry.”

“What are you apologizing to me for?” Natasha asks. Natasha has a way of sounding harsh even when she isn't. It’s why she’s so good at making men bend to her will. Anyone will do anything to make her stop sounding like that.

“I’m not a bad person,” Steve says quietly. “I swear. I just--I messed up. I got things wrong in my head, I think.”

Natasha gives Steve a withering glare before softening, with a sigh.

“I know, Steve,” she says. “I’ve been with you too, remember? Since we were kids.”

And she has. Steve is realizing more and more that Sam was right after all. He’s had people around him, people who maybe have cared for him his entire life--he had just never given them a real chance, scared as he was of being rejected.

“I love you, Nat,” Steve says and leans over to kiss her cheek. “I’m sorry I’ve never said it before.”

Natasha snorts, but accepts Steve’s hug when his arms go around her.

“The KGB didn’t teach me love, but I appreciate it,” she says.

“Good luck,” Steve says, squeezing her once and stepping away. “Not that you’ll need it.”

“The KGB didn’t--” Natasha starts, before a voice interrupts her.

“Are you telling fake stories about the KGB _again_?” Clint asks. He slings an arm across her shoulders and Natasha groans.

“Go away,” Natasha gripes.

“Not what you said last night,” Clint winks and gives her a loud kiss on the cheek.

“Ugh,” Natasha complains.

Sam and Steve stare at them, putting two and two together.

“Wait a minute,” Sam says.

“I have to go,” Natasha interrupts. “I have to actually, you know, perform, unlike you freeloaders.”

“Hey, hold on,” Clint says and Natasha turns under his arm to look at him, with pure disdain and irritation. At least until he leans down and kisses her.

Steve’s heart thumps with the way her shoulders, a tense line, soften a little, the way her face seems to open. She doesn’t smile with her face, but she smiles with the rest of her.

“Good luck, babe,” Clint says.

“Hate you,” Natasha replies and slithers out of his grasp. She turns on her heels and walks toward the women’s locker room.

The second she does, Clint turns back to look at Sam and Steve, who are just _staring_ at him, with a blink.

“What?”

“When did _that_ happen?” Sam asks. “We’ve all been friends for how long and _now_ you two end up together?”

“What can I say?” Clint grins. “That bowl of condoms has been very _very_ good for us.”

“Ugh,” Sam says in disgust and he and Clint bicker all the way out of the athlete’s corridor and toward the guest entrance.

Steve doesn’t really contribute. In his mind, he’s playing it over and over again, the way Clint had kissed her, and the way that Natasha, who is always deadly, who is always rigid, who has her claws out even when no one else does, softens under that attention, almost melts into him.

If Natasha Romanoff can take a chance on someone, then Steve can too.

Especially when that someone is--

“Barnes!” Clint says as they enter the arena and he takes them to their row.

Bucky’s already sitting in his seat, looking at the ice, but the moment Clint calls his name, he looks over at the three of them.

Clint and Sam are ahead of Steve, so there will be two people in between them. Steve doesn’t know if that’s a good thing, but his heart is beating so painfully, nervously in his chest, that he thinks maybe it’s for the best.

“Hey,” Bucky says. He looks at Sam and Clint, smiles at them. Then his eyes flicker over to Steve.

“What up,” Sam says, taking his seat. “We just saw the weirdest fucking thing.”

“Hey,” Steve says quietly.

Bucky doesn’t answer him, but he does nod toward him, a small thing, like the tiniest of olive branches. He doesn’t look at Steve with animosity or even disgust, but there is reservation there, a little hurt, maybe even something like nerves.

“Yeah, what’s that?” Bucky asks.

“Did you know Clint and Natasha were a thing?” Sam asks. “Like a _thing_ -thing.”

Sam engages Bucky in conversation and Bucky lets himself get distracted. Steve doesn’t interject at all, his own blood pulsing in his ears.

Instead, he looks at his hands, and looks at his knees, and then, eventually, looks out onto the ice, at the figure skating that starts.

  
The figure skating is all very good. Tonight is the women’s individual short program, which means Natasha will compete to set her position up for the longer skate next week. She’s slotted to go twelfth out of thirty participants, which means they’ll have to sit through almost half of the program before she takes to the ice.

That lets the four of them relax, watching the women skate, getting swept away by some performances, talking through other performances, and generally enjoying the Olympic atmosphere without having to participate in it themselves.

Carol Danvers is the first to skate for the U.S. women. Her short program is fast and powerful, with complicated spins, and a couple of lutzes that are to die for. She attempts a triple axel and doesn’t really make it, but it’s not a half-bad attempt. She doesn’t fall, but she does wobble and stumble out of formation, hands almost going to the ice. It’s the most difficult of moves, so people mostly cheer for her, proud that she’s attempted it at all.

She gets a solid score, enough to set her for contention for a medal, depending on how the Russians do.

After Carol is a Russian teenage skater who blows the audience away, and then a French skater who unfortunately falls a minute in. Then Okoye, Natasha’s perennial rival, takes to the ice and it really is something to behold, the way she spreads across the ice, like she owns it.

It’s hard for Steve to pay any attention, not with Bucky two seats away from him.

The anxiety weighs on him heavily, keeps his mind twisting down paths he would rather avoid. He’s suddenly unsure of everything Sam had told him before, everything that he thought he knew.

His breathing is so tight that Sam, who notices, of course, grips his elbow.

“Steve,” he murmurs. “Breathe.”

Steve shakes his head and Sam runs a hand down his back.

“It’s going to be okay,” Sam says, leaning in. “Everything’s going to be fine.”

Steve hears Sam, but he doesn’t know if he believes him. With everything riding on this one person, it seems likely that everything could just as easily go up in flames.

  
Steve is two people down from him, which is just as well, Bucky supposes, because Bucky still doesn’t know what he’s going to say. Seeing him, so soon after everything, had been a--a punch to the gut. He’s wearing a jacket that’s two sizes too big for him, probably because he’s wearing a sweater underneath, because he’s always cold, and red pants, and one of those winter beanies that has a little ball of fluff on top. His face is pink and his blond hair is creeping out from underneath. He looks small, uncertain, and it breaks Bucky’s heart, because he’s come to realize now, after everything, that he’s never thought of Steve that way. Steve Rogers is larger than life, in his mind, sure of absolutely everything, even of the things that are so dumb they make Bucky scream.

Bucky wants to hold his hand. He wants to wrap his scarf around him and pull him close, tuck his dumb blond head under his chin.

He aches with it, how much he loves his former arch-rival.

Bucky watches the skaters and he chats with Clint and he even leans over and jokes with Sam from time to time. He doesn’t catch Steve’s eyes and Steve doesn’t catch his.

It makes it feel a little colder, to be here, at an ice rink, with Steve so close, but without him all the same.

Bucky is mesmerized by Okoye, who he’s always been a fan of. But shortly after she finishes, he notices movement to his side; Sam leaning over a Steve, who looks like he’s struggling.

Bucky’s on edge immediately, concern bubbling through him. He’s about to lean past Clint, fight be damned, and ask what’s wrong, when Steve gets up. He leaves the row and Sam looks after him, clearly worried.

“Sam,” Bucky says immediately and Sam looks toward him.

“Go,” Sam says. “Fix this.”

Bucky gets up.

“If I miss Nat’s performance--tell her I’m sorry,” Bucky says.

“I think she wants you and Rogers to get together more than she wants gold,” Clint offers up.

That makes Bucky pause.

“Clint you--know?”

Clint snorts and leans back so that Bucky can get through.

“I’m not a complete idiot,” he says. “Just most of one. Go get your boy, Barnes, or she’s gonna be pissed no matter what medal she gets.”

Bucky takes a fortifying breath, nods at both of them, and goes after his boy.

  
Steve doesn’t know where he’s going, he just knows that he needs to get away--from the rink, from the skating, from Bucky and the anticipation looming over them both.

He doesn’t know what he wants to say or what he’s going to say, only that he feels like he can’t fail this too--somehow this is worse and more important than anything he’s done and failed before. When he fails skating, he can always get back up, always compete again. If he fails this, he loses Bucky forever--and that, that Steve can’t risk.

So he blunders through the hallway, pushing past people, feeling his breath come up short. He staggers around a corner and is about to leave, just fucking _leave_ \--

When he feels a hand on his wrist.

“Steve,” Bucky says.

Steve--stops, dead in his tracks.

“Bucky,” Steve manages, without turning. It’s a strangled kind of torn sound.

“Stop,” Bucky says. “Look at me.”

Steve used to think he was braver than this, that he could face almost any challenge against him head on, chin held high. He’s skated in world championships that mattered less to him and not batted an eye.

But now, with this, he thinks maybe he’s a coward after all.

How can he turn and tell Bucky that he lied, that what he meant when he said it meant nothing to him, was that it meant _everything_ to him? Why would Bucky believe him?

“Are you going to run away again?” Bucky asks softly. “And not tell me anything?”

It resounds in Steve’s chest, just clatters around the space there, until he lets his shoulders down and lets Bucky turn him around.

It’s a mistake, because what Steve is slowly discovering is that he can’t look at Bucky Barnes without everything going kind of haywire in his head. He can’t look at Bucky’s face without wanting to pull him closer, or stand next to him without his heart threatening to beat out of his chest. He has some kind of a strange, uncontrollable, visceral reaction to him, like he’s going out of his mind with a kind of longing that renders everything else irrelevant.

“Steve,” Bucky says. “I’m so mad at you. I’m _so mad at you_ , Stevie.”

Steve--he doesn’t crumple, but he wants to. His face certainly might, because the only other person who’s ever called him Stevie was his mother and his heart had reacted like this to her too--like it was glad, every time she was there, like she was welcoming him home. That’s what Bucky feels like to him, he realizes now, after he’s gone and fucked everything up. Bucky Barnes feels like home.

“I’m so sorry, Buck,” Steve says, wetly. “I fucked everything up.”

“What did you fuck up?” Bucky asks carefully.

“Us,” Steve says. “I said some real stupid stuff.”

“What did you say, Steve?” Bucky asks. “What did you say to fuck us up?”

Steve shakes his head, violently. He feels so miserable, a cocktail of anxiety and fears that he can’t shake even though it should be so easy. He could fix this _so easy_ , if he could just open his mouth and say it, the words he really meant.

Bucky frames Steve’s face in between his hands and tilts his head up so that Steve has no choice but to look at him.

“Do you trust me?” Bucky asks.

Steve’s vision blurs, then he nods.

“Then act like you do,” Bucky says. He slides his hands into Steve’s hair, holds him in place. “I won’t hurt you, Steve. I promise I would never hurt you.”

Steve’s heart flips in his chest. It’s beating so fast he thinks he’s going to have a panic attack. But he looks at Bucky and Bucky looks at him patiently, so patiently, and with a warmth and kindness Steve knows he doesn’t deserve.

Steve doesn’t deserve much. But Bucky does.

“I fucked up,” he says, once he can gather his courage. “Bucky, I fucked up and I don’t know how to fix it.”

“How did you fuck up?” Bucky asks. “Talk to me.”

“I said some stupid shit,” Steve says. “I said things I didn’t mean.”

He stumbles to a halt and closes his eyes and shakes his head and Bucky soothes him.

“Come on, Stevie,” he says. “Trust me. Tell me what you meant.”

Steve takes a breath. He takes a chance.

“I saw you with T’Challa,” Steve says, eyes still closed. “I saw you with him and I heard someone say that you were with him and you deserved to be with him--he’s the main course, and I’m just the appetizer. Something stupid. But it got in my head, I _let_ it get in my head because--we’re not real, Bucky, we had to pretend to date just to get here and it was _my_ fault, you didn’t even have a say in it. We don’t have what you and T’Challa had--have?--and I can’t compete with that.”

Steve opens his eyes and feels as stricken as he must look.

“I can’t compete with T’Challa, I’m not a prince of Wakanda, I’m just--” he swallows, feeling like he’s grieving again. “I’m just me. I’m just Steve. I fuck up, constantly, and I’m angry and I do and say stupid shit and I’m scared of everything and I push people away and I hurt the people I love, even when I don’t mean to and I’m scared of getting hurt, I’ve been grieving for so long I don’t know how to deal with a broken heart too. I couldn’t stand the thought of looking at you and seeing--pity there. I just--”

Steve’s chest is heaving. He feels like crying, but he can’t stop now, not that he’s started telling the truth, finally.

“I’m sorry, Buck,” he says. “I was lying when I said it didn’t mean anything to me, I was lying through my _teeth_. I was trying to hurt you before you could hurt me and that was _wrong_ , that was so fucking shitty of me. The truth is it means everything to me--I care about you more than I care about anything else, even more than the Olympics. Even more than _skating_. You mean everything to me, I _love you_ and I’m sorry, I’m so _fucking_ sorry--”

Steve doesn’t get a chance to finish, he doesn’t even get a chance to take in the hot, watery breath that’s lodged in his chest, before Bucky has his arms around him.

“You idiot,” Bucky says and he sounds--god, he sounds wet too and tired and stupidly, horribly relieved. “You _idiot_ , Steve, I don’t care about T’Challa, you dumbass, I don’t care about him, I don’t want him, I don’t _love_ him. The only person you have to compete with is yourself and I don’t know how you’re losing against yourself, but I guess you are, because you’re so fucking dumb and infuriating and god I would _hate you_ if I didn’t love you.”

“What?” Steve gasps into Bucky’s shoulder. The words rattle around in his dumb brain.

Bucky pulls back a little and his face is pink, his eyes shining, his mouth curved up into a happy, _happy_ smile.

“I love you,” Bucky says. “Steve Rogers. You absolute _menace_ , I love you. Not fake, not pretend, but actual, real love.”

“But T’Challa,” Steve says dumbly.

“Oh my _god_ ,” Bucky says. “Do you ever listen to anyone other than yourself?”

“No,” Steve says, automatically. Then he laughs, a little in disbelief. “Yes. Wait, Buck--”

“Do you mean it?” Bucky asks, seriously. “Do you love me too? Because I’ve spent my entire life thinking you hated me and--I gotta tell you Steve, it sucked.”

“What?” Steve asks, his eyes widening.

Bucky laughs a little at that, rueful and a bit sad.

“I wanted to be your friend, so badly, when we were kids,” Bucky says, letting Steve go and trying to step back. “I’ve only ever wanted that, but you hated me so much and it was easier to hate you than to wonder why you didn’t like me too.”

It dawns on Steve then, just slowly creeps over him, that maybe he’s been an idiot this _entire time_. Not just now, not just earlier, but his _entire life_.

“Bucky I--”

“I just need to make sure,” Bucky says. He takes another step back and it takes everything in Steve to not chase after him. “I’ve spent years trying to get your attention, Rogers, so if this is just a phase, or if you just feel bad for me or--if this is just what you need, to get the gold, I--just tell me. Please. It’ll hurt, but I’ll get over it. I won’t fuck up our routine, I promise, I just don’t want to put my heart out there only for it to be pretend, I can’t take it anymore, Steve, I can’t be in a _fake_ relationship with you, I want the real thing, I want to _be with you_ , I want to be your friend and your boyfriend, I _love you_ \--”

And Bucky is so earnest, he’s so close to shattering, himself, this entire thing is so ludicrous and high stakes and it feels like they’re both bleeding out of their goddamn chests and Steve’s had it, he’s absolutely, fucking had it, he’s done with being stupid, if they’ve been trying to get the gold medal in being absolute _idiots_ they’ve won it easily, over anyone else, and he doesn’t want that gold, he wants a different one, he wants one to share, with the only person who’s stupid enough to share it with him.

Steve doesn’t let Bucky get away. He doesn’t let either of them run this time. He grasps the front of Bucky’s jacket and pulls him close, throws himself at Bucky, wraps his arms around Bucky’s shoulders, leans up, drags him down, and _kisses him_.

  
Sometime in between the first kiss and the third one, Bucky’s arms winding its way around Steve’s back, Steve’s arms wrapped around Bucky’s neck, their breaths and tears mingling together, their stupid, dumb, idiotic hearts beating as one, Steve pushing against Bucky and Bucky pushing against Steve, both trying to get as close as possible, to kiss as much as they can, because they’re overflowing with this--the two dumb, stupids that they are, this feeling that has been growing between them for days, or maybe weeks, or even months, but probably years, since the first time that Steve had stepped onto an ice skating rink and seen Bucky Barnes in his costume, that easy smile on his face, the kindest face Steve had ever seen, and Bucky Barnes had looked over and seen little Steve Rogers, like a fucking angel on skates, and known then, in a way he couldn’t explain, not until now, that this person was the person he would spend his entire fucking life chasing.

“I love you,” Steve says in between their kisses. “I love you so much, Buck, I’m stupid, I’m sorry, it’s not pretend, I’m just _so stupid_ , I love you.”

To which Bucky, also crying, also laughing, also kissing Steve as much as he can and as hard as he can, the breath leaving him and coming back and leaving him again, says, “I love you too. You _are_ stupid, you’re so fucking stupid, can you be my stupid? I love you, please have a real relationship with me.”

And Steve, arms clasped around Bucky, heart beating desperately fast in his chest, but like, in a happy way, smiles and kisses him and says, “Yes. Yes, Bucky Barnes, I would love to be in a real relationship with you.”

**

They eventually have to stop kissing and have to stop crying and Bucky thinks he’s never been so exhausted, emotionally, but also happy in a way he never thought was possible. He takes Steve’s face between his hands, calls him stupid, and kisses him again.

Then he drags him back to the arena, hand-in-hand, because if there’s a chance they can see Natasha perform, they must. She can and will kill them with her blades otherwise, of this he is absolutely certain.

By the time they get back to their row, Sam and Clint look up at them expectedly, and it doesn’t go unnoticed that Steve and Bucky are holding hands or that they’re slightly out of breath, hair rumpled, or that their faces are wet and flushed.

“It’s about _fucking time_ ,” Sam says loudly. “My god!”

“ _Now_ will you try the bowl of condoms?” Clint asks and both Bucky and Steve turn bright red.

Sam and Clint both scoot seats down, leaving Steve and Bucky to take places next to each other.

“Nat’s next,” Bucky turns to Steve and says, looking at the announcement board.

“I’m gonna be so mad if she doesn’t win gold,” Steve says. “After all her judgmental glaring.”

“She does glare judgmentally a lot, doesn’t she?” Bucky observes.

“She’s the most annoying person I’ve ever met,” Steve says.

“That’s what I said!” Bucky says excitedly. “That’s what I tell her all the time!”

To which Steve laughs, which makes Bucky’s heart stumble in his chest.

“Can I hold your hand, boyfriend?” Steve leans closer and asks. His cheeks blush the prettiest pink and Bucky grins, pleased.

“I would be honored, boyfriend.”

“I’m sickened of this entire thing already,” Sam mutters to the side. “I take it back. I take all of it back.”

Bucky takes Steve’s hand, heart hammering in his chest, and Steve leans against them and they watch as Natasha skates out onto the ice.

  
She skates to Swan Lake, which is overdone by everyone else, but from Natasha Romanoff is transformed into a breathtaking piece of art. Her movements are flawless, her jumps exquisite. Her black and silver costume, studded with silver gems, twinkles in the spotlight, makes it look like she’s the night sky herself, skating on a lake of ice. That’s the difference, with Natasha; she’s not the swan or the lake, she’s the sky that watches over them both, beautiful and sweeping.

Her spins are executed with ease, her jumps flawless. The lines of her body stretch on and on, precise and magnificent. She finishes a triple lutz triple toe as though it feels like nothing, like so many rotations in the air and landing on her blades with cat-like reflexes is something that any mere mortal could do in her sleep.

She’s stunning. She’s an absolute vision.

By the time she finishes, everyone’s crying and pretending they’re not.

Steve and Bucky stand, give her the ovation of a fucking lifetime.

Steve’s heart beats in his chest, fast and hard. Natasha was breathtaking and so was her skating. Skating is breathtaking. This is why he stays here; this is why he returned, for this feeling, for this sheer, incandescent, gasping, heart-rending feeling of love.

“We’ll do that tomorrow,” Bucky says. “We’ll do it just like that.”

Steve holds Bucky’s hand tight in his own, throat constricted with feeling, unable to talk, and nods.

  
Natasha comes in first place that night. It’s not even a competition.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I am a _big_ fan of dramatic, over-the-topic apologies and declarations of love. Hope this soothed all of those feelings of frustration you've been feeling toward the dumbest of boys. Happy Thanksgiving!


	13. twelve. (the long program)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> All good things must come to an end, friends, so here we are at the final chapter and epilogue. As ever, thank you so very much for reading, commenting, and encouraging me by yelling about how dumb Steve and Bucky are because, at the end of the day, that is the only thing we all know to be true.
> 
> I hope this fic put a small on your face! Here we go, the final program. :) 
> 
> (Warning: It is. Cheesy. You're welcome.)

The evening of the long program dawns with a flurry of nerves and excitement in the crisp Wakandan air.

Steve and Bucky arrive at the arena early, bags slung across their shoulders, talking in low voices about lutzes and spirals and just how resoundingly _drunk_ Natasha had gotten the night before.

“When she kissed Clint I swear to god I thought I was hallucinating,” Bucky murmurs.

“I know! I was like, is this what a fever dream feels like? Or like those...worms?” Steve says back.

“Worms…?” Bucky raises an eyebrow.

“Yeah! Like in tequila,” Steve insists.

“We were all taking vodka shots, Rogers…” Bucky says.

“I know that! Whatever!” Steve grumbles, turning pink, and Bucky laughs, warmly.

“You’re such a little weirdo,” Bucky grins and leans down to kiss Steve’s temple.

“A weirdo who’s gonna get us Olympic gold,” Steve gripes.

They slip through the athlete’s entrance with little to no fuss and only two bodily scans.

“Yeah you gonna lift yourself into the twist lift?” Bucky asks, raising an eyebrow.

“Maybe,” Steve says, unrelentingly, scratching his nose.

“You’re the worst,” Bucky laughs, offering Steve his hand. “Come on.”

Steve makes a face, but takes it.

  
They change in the locker room into their costumes, Bucky in all black, with a silver sleeve that looks like shifting metal plates. There’s a red star in the middle of the arm and corresponding red jewels that stud his left side. When he moves, the light catches the gems and makes it look like he’s on fire.

Steve’s costume is a dark blue that brings out his eyes. It has a matching star, although his is silver and in the middle of his chest. There are silver lines stroked across, coming out from the star, and there are silver feathers on both shoulders. Natasha had done his make up, silver eyeliner framing his eyes and a dust of silver highlighter across his cheekbones.

“You look ridiculous,” Bucky says with a grin. “I’m so into it.”

“Shut up,” Steve says, crowding Bucky against a locker. “You look so hot. It’s not fair.”

Steve can feel Bucky’s heart beating rapidly under his palm. Bucky gives him his laziest, most infuriating smile, and then very carefully touches Steve’s hair.

“You always look beautiful,” he says softly. “How is _that_ fair?”

“Nice try,” Steve grumbles. “I know you’re a little shit.”

“ _I’m_ the little shit?” Bucky says loudly, just before Steve covers his mouth with his own.

Bucky’s mid-protest, but visibly melts under the kiss. This is something Steve is learning rapidly. Bucky Barnes doesn’t kiss so much as melt into a kiss.

Bucky sighs and Steve leans closer, tries to open his mouth when Bucky pulls back.

“Hey—!” Steve whines.

“Steven,” Bucky says. “This costume leaves little to the imagination to begin with. It hides _nothing._ ”

“I know,” Steve grins. “Like I said, so hot.”

“You little shit!” Bucky exclaims and shoves Steve, who’s cackling, away.

“Do I hear fighting?” a familiar, displeased voice grumbles to them from the doorway. “I’ll bench your asses, don’t think I won’t.”

“Nope,” Bucky says to Fury, brightly, even warmly. “No fighting here. Just two idiots in love.”

“Even worse,” Fury grumbles. “Your warm up’s in ten. Don’t make me regret it.”

Fury leaves and Steve turns to Bucky with a breath. He’s starting to feel it now, the magnitude, the nerves.

“This is it,” he says.

“This is it,” Bucky agrees.

“To the end of the line,” Steve says.

“What?” Bucky makes a face. “What line?”

“I don’t know,” Steve replies. “I read it somewhere!”

“Is it a line or a line segment?” Bucky follows up. “Where’s the line?”

“ _Bucky_ ,” Steve complains, but Bucky is relentless.

“Who made the line? Why are we on a line? Can I get off the line? How many lines are there anyway?”

“You’re so annoying!” Steve groans, shoving Bucky. “I hate you!”

This makes Bucky grin broadly.

“No you don’t,” he says. “Not anymore.”

Steve lets out a long-suffering, largely beleaguered sigh.

“No,” he says. “Not anymore.”

Bucky smiles and kisses him once more, a single peck.

“One for the road,” he says. Then, “Come on. Let’s go skate for our lives.”

**

Steve and Bucky have completed their long program in practice dozens of times. They’ve been adequate, fine even. They’ve landed their jumps, spun in synchronicity. They’ve never gone into it like this before, though; not on the biggest stage in the world and not together, with  understanding and trust that makes everything seem smooth as butter.

They skate out onto the middle of the rink, their costumes glinting under the lights, Bucky holding Steve’s hand.

Everyone in the audience screams, but the two of them only have eyes for each other.

They stop in the middle and Bucky lets go of Steve and Steve looks up at him and for a moment, this is all they have and all they need, just each other, just in the lights, just on ice.

Bucky smiles and mouths _I love you._

Steve grins and says _I love you too._

And then Bucky leans down and presses a kiss to Steve’s forehead.

**

They don’t hear commentators that night, so they don’t hear what gets said.

 _Rogers and Barnes look brand new, born again_ , NBC says. _They move like they’re one entity, everything fluid. It’s a vision to behold._

 _There’s something there that’s been missing_ , ESPN writes. _They seem to anticipate each other’s needs. There isn’t a single thing they do wrong. They’re a revelation in this sport._

 _A throw quad lutz is difficult, you say?_ The Guardian publishes. _Not for pairs sensation Rogers and Barnes. Just when figure skating was starting to get stale--these two change the entire game. We don’t know where they came from, but we never want them to leave._

 _30 Reasons Why Bucky Barnes and Steve Rogers Will Be Your New Sporting Obsession_ , BuzzFeed posts. It receives 2.5K retweets and over 500 comments.

**

Steve and Bucky, well they don’t hear any of it.

What they do hear is the beginning, swelling chords of Bittersweet Symphony, a small intake of breath from each other, the comforting slick of blades on ice, and then Steve looks up and then Bucky looks up and they both smile.

It’s not just the perfect throw quad lutz or the magnificent triple twist lift or even the perfectly synchronized jump coordinations. It’s not the triple axel that Bucky lands that leaves the audience gasping or the triple lutz that Steve lands on his feet, taking the collective breath out of the entire room. It’s the way they look at each other when they come together, the way their touches seem to spark electricity.

It’s the way they breathe together, the way that they seem to move with the music and with each other, like water with the current.

It’s the way they trust each other so fully that when Bucky throws Steve, Steve’s eyes are closed and he lands with a smile.

They’re brilliant apart, but magnificent together.

It’s a sweeping, terribly beautiful thing and the best part is that they do it together.

Bucky and Steve come back together and Bucky reaches for Steve and Steve reaches for Bucky and Bucky spins Steve into a death spiral so low and so wide that no one can look away.

They come back up for air, spin after spin, matching step for step, heart for heart.

When they finish, Bucky’s hand on Steve’s lower back, Steve dipping back, there isn’t a single person in the arena who isn’t on their feet cheering or, at least, crying.

Bucky’s chest heaves and Steve’s chest heaves and when they come back up to take their breathless, beaming, terribly happy bows, Steve doesn’t let Bucky go too far.

There, in front of the entire world watching, in the middle of the most important competition of their lives, on the ice that is their entire world, heart thumping in his chest, Steve takes Bucky’s face in between his hands, and kisses him.

The audience roars again and Bucky, pink, breathless, incandescently happy, kisses him back.

**

At the kiss and tell, they’re pink, out of breath, and so happy they can’t seem to stop grinning. Steve and Bucky both have bouquets of flowers in their hands and little teddy bears they picked up as they skated off the rink to thunderous applause and a veritable barrage of stuffed animals and flowers.

If performing for their lives had been exhilarating, it was nothing compared to what was waiting for them at the boards.

Fury, who has never been anything less than stoic and bark-y, stood waiting for them both and, in an uncharacteristic and slightly terrifying moment of sentiment, he took both of them in his arms, hugged them, and said, voice a little gruff, “That’ll do.”

**

They sit next to each other, leaning against each other, Bucky covering his mouth as he says something to Steve and Steve laughing, lighting up like the goddamned sun itself.

Bucky’s hand is on Steve’s thigh and Steve leans against Bucky’s shoulder and when they announce the scores—so close to perfect across the board, Steve laughs a little, choked with feeling, and turns and kisses Bucky.  
  
It’s never felt like this before, he’ll think later. He’s never had someone to share the glory in, the pride and happiness. It’s not a bitter experience at all. In fact, it makes everything all the sweeter.

**

The thing is, they skate for their absolute lives and they win the hearts of the audience and of each other. Their scores are stupendous, momentous even.

But they’re still only a fresh pair and with experience comes technical skills and artistry that a new duo just can’t reach, no matter how breathtaking.

It’s okay, Steve says, looking at the scoreboard at the end of the night.

The Sokovians were something to behold. They had been skating together since they were children; and there’s no shame in coming in second to that.

**FIGURE SKATING PAIRS — FINAL RESULTS**

**Gold—Maximoff/Maximoff (SKVA)  
** **Silver—Barnes/Rogers (USA)  
** **Bronze—Stark/Rhodes (USA)**

**

“Are you disappointed?” their favorite BuzzFeed reporter asks them, after the medals are announced.

Steve looks at Bucky, slightly worried, but Bucky’s face is so unmistakably, terribly happy that something loosens in his own chest.

“Am I disappointed?” Bucky asks as though this is the most ludicrous thing he’s ever heard. “For winning _silver_? At the _Olympics_? At an event we started training for _three months ago_? Are you crazy? I am over the _fucking moon!_ ”

The BuzzFeed reporter laughs and Bucky grins and kisses Steve’s temple, his arm around Steve’s shoulder, and Steve feels dizzy with it—this person, this moment, and how lucky he is to be a part of it.

“What about you, Steve?” the reporter turns to him and smiles. “Is this the comeback you were hoping for?”

Was it the comeback he was hoping for all of those months ago? Skating by himself, devastated and reeling from the loss of his best friend, scared to take to the ice, and scared to leave it; was this moment that he had imagined that day Fury had come to him and asked him what he wanted?

This was nothing like that, not even a little close.

“No,” Steve says, a smile slowly creeping across his entire face. “It’s even better.”

**

Bucky offers his hand and Steve takes it, lets his _real boyfriend_ pull him up to the silver medal podium.

They’re in their white USA jackets, wreaths of Wakandan flowers around the crowns of their heads. They have little black panther stuffed animals and Steve can’t stop squeezing his.

“Steve,” Bucky complains. “We’re about to get our _Olympic medals_.”

“Yeah, but look,” Steve says grinning at Bucky and squeezing the stuffed animal again. “He lights up when you squeeze!”

“My boyfriend’s a child,” Bucky mutters and Steve himself lights up, a broad smile at being called that, even though no one can hear except for him.

He stops playing with the stuffed animal to look out around them. So much of this experience has been a whirlwind of emotion, things out of his control, and things in his control that have felt out of his control. He’s barely had a chance to think about this moment, match his reality to his dreams.

There are people out there, watching now, hundreds and thousands of them, in the audience and on television and on livestreams. It’s an enormous, overwhelming feeling to know that they’re here for this, to celebrate with him, to celebrate _him_ , and Bucky, and this sport that they both love so very much.

He takes a shaky breath as it starts to get to him, but Bucky’s hand braces his lower back almost immediately. It’s almost as though he can tell, just from the lines of Steve’s shoulders, that he’s retreating into his own head again.

“Look around us Steve,” Bucky says softly, close to his ear, so only he can hear. “We’re here.”

Steve looks around them, looks at where they are, swallows, and turns to Bucky. Bucky’s watching him, expression soft and fond.

“Thank you,” Bucky says. “For getting us here.”

“We got us here,” Steve says. “I almost fucked that up.”

“No, idiot,” Bucky says. He tilts his head a little. “I mean yeah. But without you, we wouldn’t be here. Without you _I_ wouldn’t be here. So--thank you, Steve Rogers. For bulldozing me.”

Steve colors at that, a soft, pleased blush. Then he takes a nervous breath and says--

“Bucky.”

Bucky gives him a questioning look.

“Would you want to do this again?” he asks.

“The Olympics?” Bucky asks.

“No,” Steve says. He looks up at Bucky, his arch-rival and former enemy, the person he knows, now, he was always going to end up falling in love with. “Would you want to be partners again? With me?”

There, in the middle of the podium, the medal ceremony just minutes away from starting, with flower crowns and little stuffed black panther dolls, Bucky’s face lights up in a smile that Steve once would have found insufferable, but now finds to set his heart racing faster.

“Are you asking me to pairs skate with you, Rogers?” Bucky asks. “In perpetuity?”

Steve, a little embarrassed, wrinkles his nose and nods.

“Guess I am, Barnes,” he says.

“Well then, I only have one thing to say to you,” Bucky says and Steve raises an eyebrow. “Are we skating on a line segment? Or is it a line? Are we going to the end of it? Why are we skating there? Do people _usually_ skate in lines? Why do you like lines so mu--”

Steve shoves his black panther doll against Bucky’s mouth and Bucky dissolves into giggles behind it.

“You’re _so annoying_!” Steve complains. “And on international television too!”

Bucky’s still giggling when Steve takes the plushie away.

He’s grinning as the ceremony begins, smiling as a member of the Dora Milaje slides the bronze medals around Tony and Rhodey’s necks.

When she gets to them, stands in front of them, with their Olympic silver medals, medals that _they earned_ , together, and she slides their medals around their necks, and Steve glows from the inside out with pride, and the crowd cheers for them--everywhere, all over the arena, all over the world--well, it’s then, and only then that Bucky leans over and presses a kiss against Steve’s cheek.

“Why Steve Rogers,” he says. “I would love to pairs skate with you."


	14. epilogue.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This one's just pure fluff. :)

**ten months later.**

“How many BuzzFeed listicles can they make about two people?” Sam groans. He’s sitting at one of the tables at Bryant Park, beanie over his head, puffy red jacket on, Nikes on his feet. There’s a phone in his hand that he’s scrolling through and complaining about once every, oh, twenty seconds or so.

“How many BuzzFeed listicles can one person click on in a day?” Natasha asks, dryly. She, too, is bundled for the cold, although her beanie has a huge, fuzzy, pink fluffball at the top, which on anyone else would look ridiculous, but which on Natasha Romanoff looks just right. At least, she looks slightly softer and marginally less likely to murder you with a look alone.

“It’s Wilson, so like, a hundred,” Clint remarks. He’s not wearing a hat at all, he’s barely wearing a coat, because he, as he likes to claim, Runs Hot. Natasha’s called him an idiot a minimum of five times already.

“BuzzFeed listicles are a healthy part of a growing boy’s diet,” Sam gripes.

“Is that in addition to or separate from the _six_ beef buns you ordered?” Bucky arrives with an armload of food.

“My mans!” Sam crows and puts his phone away immediately. “Man, I’m starving. Did I order six buns? I meant ten.”

“Now you just sound like Clint,” Natasha says with disdain.

Next to her, Clint’s already started eating his gozelme, which is only one of seven things he’s ordered from the food stalls.

“Thanks!” he says brightly and leans over to kiss Natasha’s cheek.

“Ugh,” Natasha replies, like anyone’s going to mistake anything she says toward Clint now as anything other than affection. Ten months later and she still pretends that she’s not in love with or dating the blond, although literally every single person knows otherwise.

“Okay, I got like a million hot chocolates,” Steve says. He comes armed with all of the drinks and puts them down on the small, quickly cramped table, heavily.

“Isn’t Barnes the only one who ordered a hot chocolate?” Sam asks. “I wanted coffee.”

“Then get your own damn coffee, Wilson,” Bucky grumbles. He takes the hot chocolate from Steve and smiles at him warmly, leans down to kiss him. “Thanks, Stevie.”

“Ugh, gross,” Natasha says, at the same time Sam says, “We _get_ it, you’re in _love_ ,” and Clint says, “What, are you two like, dating or something?”

“Is Sam complaining about listicles again?” Steve says, grinning and taking a hot chocolate for himself. “He’s always so cranky when he’s looking at listicles.”

“I’m not cranky!” Sam protests. He starts in on one of his beef buns. “All I’m saying is, we _get_ that you two are skating’s It Couple or whatever, like damn, how annoying do you have to be to get more coverage than that Canadian fake couple?”

“Oh, Tessa and Scott?” Steve beams. “I love them!”

“It’s not our fault People Magazine did a cover with us, Sam,” Bucky says. He reaches over and steals a fry from in front of Steve. Steve tries to swat his hand away and Bucky dutifully ignores. “I don’t know if you heard, but Steve here and I won Olympic silver.”

“Bitch, so did I!” Sam cries angrily around a beef bun. “Where’s my listicle, godDAMNIT!”

“I’ll be sure to pitch one to BuzzFeed,” Steve says, around a fry. “20 Tweets That Will Make You Realize That Sam Wilson Is….Really Annoying.”

“Hey!” Sam protests and everyone--literally _everyone_ snickers. “A man can’t get no respect around here.”

“That was so funny, Steve,” Bucky says proudly. “You’re so funny.”

“Thank you,” Steve says, also proudly. “You may take one fry.”

Bucky takes like, five.

“Ugh, finish your food,” Natasha says. “You’re all bickering children and I want to skate.”

Steve and Bucky look at each other and snicker. But they do as they’re told.

They, too, want to skate.

  
Skating at Bryant Park during the holiday season is everything Steve had imagined it would be. There are Christmas stalls lining the ice skating rink, wreathed in twinkling lights,  the smell of cider and hot chocolate and fried foods in the air. There are families and tourists strolling, all bundled up in their coats and scarves, watching the skaters or coming to skate themselves. The air is cold and brisk around them, the night sky dark, without clouds.

The moon hangs above them and it’s not Wakanda, but Wakanda was a dream and this--this is his reality.

Steve puts on his skates and Bucky waits for him by the ice. He smiles at him, his hair floppy in front, his fingerless gloves on, and he extends Steve a hand.

Steve takes it and lets Bucky pull him out into the rink, in the middle of all of those people, on a cold night in December, with the snow falling gently around them.

  
They don’t do anything fancy that night--no jumps or lifts or twists, even. Steve tries to do a spin and promptly falls on his ass, which makes Bucky laugh so hard that Sam, good best friend that he is, “accidentally” bumps into him and then _Bucky_ falls on his ass.

The snow is everywhere, sticking to their hats, their eyelashes, their cold fingertips. Bucky pulls Steve up and Steve tilts his head up to the sky, lets the snow fall on his tongue.

“Olympic silver is great and all,” Bucky says softly, watching Steve. “But have you ever taken the person you love skating right before Christmas and watched snow fall on his eyelashes?”

Steve opens his eyes and squints at Bucky.

“That sounds awfully sentimental for my former arch-rival,” he says.

“Guess your former arch-rival is kind of sentimental,” Bucky says. He doesn’t even try to sound anything less than sincere, which, Steve has discovered over the last ten months, is more or less Bucky’s normal.

He has no idea now, how he had let himself believe for so long that Bucky was anything less than an affectionate, incredibly sentimental, saccharine, earnest puppy. He makes Steve feel loved and welcome no matter how out of place he feels or in his head he gets or how sad his memories make him. In turn, when Bucky’s down, when he’s having a hard day or his anxiety is debilitating, Steve just crawls into bed with him and wraps his arms around his middle. Bucky tucks his face into Steve’s shoulder and apologizes and Steve tells him over and over again that he has nothing to apologize for--that he would give up a hundred Olympic medals, just to be here with him and hold him.

Before, they were both unbalanced, off-kilter, careening terribly in their own ways.

Together, they’re two halves of a very remarkable whole.

Bucky was right. They’re perfect for each other.

“Aren’t you tired of skating with me, Barnes?” Steve asks, face wrinkled, because the only way he knows to deal with Bucky’s absolute sincerity is to deflect it as best as he can.

“Why don’t you ask me if I’m tired of living? Tired of breathing? Tired of the moon above us and the ocean waters, the skyline of Manhattan, endless hot chocolate--” Steve covers Bucky’s mouth with his gloved hand and Bucky laughs.

“Good grief,” Steve says. “You’re _unbearable_.”

Bucky’s laugh turns into a chuckle turns into a soft, unbearably fond grin. Steve takes his hand away and then reaches out, takes Bucky’s hand into his own.

Bucky leads the way, the two of them holding hands, skating in lazy circles around the ice rink.

“I could never get tired of skating with you,” Bucky says eventually and Steve smiles. “You make everything feel all right.”

Now Steve’s the one feeling sentimental. His heart keens in his chest, soft and now familiar.

He tugs Bucky to a stop.

“What?”

Steve reaches up, balancing on his blades, the top half of his mittens hanging back, exposing his fingers to the cold air. They’re icy cold against Bucky’s skin and Bucky makes a face.

“I love you,” Steve says, kisses him softly. “Bucky Barnes. I’m lucky enough to love you.”

Bucky, as usual, melts into the kiss. He closes his eyes and leans closer, kisses Steve back softly, swaying with the wind, the swirling snowflakes dusting them both.

He sighs, but when he opens his eyes, Steve is staring at him.

“But if you miss that triple lutz _again_ , I’m going to murder you,” Steve says.

“Are you kidding me?” Bucky scowls. “ _Again_? Here? I’m trying to be romantic, Rogers!”

“What romance!” Steve says, throwing up his arms. “What’s romantic about a missed jump! You do it again and Fury’s going to _kill_ you!”

“Fury _loves_ me!” Bucky argues back. “You’re the one who _couldn’t throw me up_.”

“You’re bigger than I am!” Steve says. “Why am I practicing lifts with you!”

“Do you want to win at Worlds or not?” Bucky says. “I can’t always be lifting you! Do you think you’re light as a feather or something!”

“ _I ate a lot that day!_ ” Steve says back. He starts skating away from Bucky.

“Don’t you skate away from _me_ , Steven Grant!” Bucky yells and then he follows. “Come back here, we’re not finished!”

Steve grins and skates away as fast as he can and Bucky gives chase.

Eventually, he catches up to Steve, catches his arm, and they loop around the ice, hand-in-hand, faces pink, eyes bright, kissing occasionally, and bickering all the way.

  
**

After the New Year, they return to the training arena.

“All right, pairs skaters!” Fury barks at everyone around him. “Lace up! We’re doing skating drills until _everyone_ gets this right!”

Something old, something new.

Steve and Bucky finish lacing their boots, look at one another, grin, and stand.

Bucky offers his hand and Steve takes it.

 _Here we go_ , Steve thinks as his blades hit the ice. _We’re coming for that gold_.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> \+ Thank you again--to you, readers, and to Deb for bidding on me and requesting this fic (or some measure of it) in the first place! 
> 
> \+ If you're in the mood for some more massive fluff and shenanigans, might I suggest checking out my offering for the 2018 Cap Bing Bang: [He's All That](https://archiveofourown.org/works/16387346/chapters/38356685)? 
> 
> \+ If you had a good time reading this, feel free to spread the word on Tumblr: [Masterpost for turn back into stars](https://spacerenegades.tumblr.com/post/180434679598/nine-months-in-the-making-i-finally-offer-to-the). 
> 
> \+ See you soon--there's more fic to come!

**Author's Note:**

> \+ Title based on [Turn Back Into Stars](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lPqpXkqjRXI) by Panic is Perfect, which I would consider the song this fic is set to!
> 
> If you like what you read and would like to yell about Marvel and stucky with me, I can be found at [@spacerenegades](http://spacerenegades.tumblr.com) on Tumblr! Come make friends!


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